Telegram bot

The workflow answers in Telegram direct chats and groups: it receives messages and attachments and sends text, files and buttons.

Connecting

Triggers

In a direct chat the bot answers every message. In a group that would be intolerable, so there are settings: react to a mention, to a reply to its own message, to given phrases. While no trigger matches, the update is treated as noise and no run is created — which saves both credits and the group’s patience.

The update types the bot receives at all are listed separately: messages, reactions, member events. Fewer subscriptions, fewer pointless runs.

Diagnostics

The channel panel has a check button: it asks Telegram what the bot actually sees and reports the mismatches — privacy mode still on, missing admin rights, update types not subscribed. Start there when “the bot is silent”.

Group history

The Bot API cannot read past messages: there is no method that returns yesterday’s conversation. So the history is whatever the bot recorded itself while it was in the group, and recording is opt-in (off by default — a bot may well be sitting in someone else’s group). How much is kept is capped by the plan.

With recording on, the telegram_history and telegram_search nodes and the moderation tools have something to work with.

What next

• Telegram nodes — filter the reference for “telegram”.
• The Deploy tab — the other channels.