Connect WhatsApp Business¶

WhatsApp Business is the channel Wably uses to talk to your clients: it's where appointment requests, cancellations, reschedules and questions about your services arrive. Connecting it is the step that switches the assistant on.

The connection happens through an official WhatsApp guided process, from the WhatsApp Business card on the Integrations screen.

How to connect your number¶

1. Open the Integrations screen and choose Connect on the WhatsApp Business card.
2. WhatsApp's guided process opens: you're asked to sign in and confirm your business number.
3. Follow the steps all the way through, without closing the window before the confirmation message.
4. When done, the card shows the status Connected and the assistant is ready to reply.

The connection status is always visible on the Integrations card of the Home and on the Integrations screen.

What you need before you start¶

There's nothing technical to prepare, but keep three things within reach:

• Your business phone number, the one clients already use to message you.
• Access to the phone or the inbox where you can receive the verification code.
• Your Facebook or Meta Business account credentials, if you already have one for your business. If you don't, the process guides you through creating it.

The connection takes a few minutes. If you interrupt it halfway nothing irreversible happens: you can start again from the WhatsApp Business card.

What doesn't change, for you and for your clients¶

This is the point that raises the most doubts, and the one worth being clear about.

• You can use your existing WhatsApp Business number. No new number is needed, you don't have to print different business cards, you don't have to tell anyone about a change.
• Your clients don't have to do anything. No app to download, no sign-up, no link to save. They keep messaging you in the same conversation as always.
• You keep writing too. When you step into a chat personally, the client simply sees a reply from your number. From that moment the assistant stops replying to that client for 6 hours: see Reply to clients manually.
• The connection uses the official WhatsApp Business API, the standard Meta provides for businesses. It isn't a system that works around the platform's rules, with the blocking risks that come with that.

If you want to understand how the channel works day to day, the page WhatsApp Business without changing your number tells it from the point of view of someone using it.

After the connection¶

With WhatsApp Business connected, the assistant is technically able to receive and send messages. For it to do its job, though, the other two pieces of the setup are needed too:

• Google Calendar, to know when you're free and where to write appointments;
• Google Contacts, to recognise the clients you already know.

Finally, remember who the assistant replies to: anyone who writes to you and isn't in Contacts, just as it would to a new client, and enabled contacts. The contacts you import from your Google address book come in disabled: import them before you turn on the assistant, so family and friends don't get automatic replies. See Contacts.