Write the message. A text box, a preview that shows the post as the follower will see it, and a formatting bar: bold, italic, strikethrough, plus a palette of emojis. The emoji is inserted at the cursor, and formatting applies to the selection, which stays in place so you can chain two styles. Formatting uses WhatsApp syntax and goes out as is: the follower’s phone renders it, and the preview shows you the expected result, never the stars.
Add a photo. The “Choose an image” button uploads from your computer, the console hosts the file and fills in the address by itself. The address field stays available if you already host your visuals elsewhere. 2 MB maximum, in JPEG, PNG or GIF: the file’s real type is checked, a renamed file is refused.
The “Chat” button is attached to a link, which pairs a phrase with a scenario. The phrase is what the follower will send by tapping. Three rules govern it, and they show at creation: a phrase can neither contain nor be contained in the phrase of another link or of a WhatsApp widget (“Promo!” and “Promo?” count as the same phrase), otherwise a single tap would start two scenarios; the console counts how many existing messages already contain it, to spare you a phrase that is too common (“Hello” would trigger on everything); finally, a phrase cannot start with a stop word (“stop”, “unsubscribe”…), otherwise every follower who tapped would be unsubscribed.
A tap takes back control of the thread. If the conversation was held by an operator or by Meta’s agent, the button’s scenario starts anyway and control goes back to the application. It is the same principle as a campaign: someone made an explicit move, here the follower themself. An ordinary keyword, on the other hand, does not take control back: a person in the middle of answering a customer must not be cut off by a scenario on a mere message.
The list of posts shows, for each post: its formatted text, its date, its status read live from the provider, the scenario its button leads to, and how many people sent its button’s message. A dead button is flagged, with its fix next to it.
“How many clicks” does not exist, and it is not a gap in the console. A tap on the button opens WhatsApp on the follower’s phone: this move goes through no server, neither ours nor the channel’s. What can be measured is the message that arrives next. The screen therefore shows exactly what it observes, “N people sent this message”, counted as distinct people: a follower who taps three times counts as one.
Three limits are written under the list, rather than tucked away in a tooltip:
- the figure is for the button, all its posts combined. Two posts on the same button send the same message, nothing says which one was seen;
- a message received while the button was off is counted, without having started anything;
- when the measure is unavailable, the screen shows nothing rather than a zero, which would read “this button produced nothing”.
Nor does this figure say “conversations started”, and that is deliberate: we only recognise the button’s phrase, while three more conditions then decide whether a scenario really starts.