WhatsApp Business
Connect your WhatsApp Business account to AIChatVault to manage AI-assisted conversations, team inbox workflows, human handoff, approved message templates and campaigns. Your configured AI agent can answer suitable inbound questions using your knowledge base, while your team can take over when a conversation needs human attention.
Requirements
- •A Meta Business Account with WhatsApp Business API access.
- •A verified WhatsApp Business phone number set up in Meta Business Manager.
- •Admin access to your WhatsApp Business Account to authorise the connection.
Connecting via OAuth (recommended)
Open your agent and go to Deploy → WhatsApp
Click Connect with Meta
Grant permissions and select your WhatsApp account
Connection confirmed
Test it
Connecting manually (advanced)
If you have a System User access token from Meta for Developers and prefer not to use OAuth — for example in an agency or headless setup — you can connect by entering credentials directly:
- •In Meta for Developers, open your app's WhatsApp → API Setup screen and copy the Phone Number ID.
- •Generate a System User access token with
whatsapp_business_messagingpermission and copy it. - •On the WhatsApp Connect tab, open the Advanced Setup panel and paste in the Phone Number ID and access token. Display phone number and WhatsApp Business Account ID are optional.
- •Click Save. AIChatVault verifies the token against the phone number with Meta before the connection is marked active.
messages field — otherwise Meta has nowhere to deliver inbound messages.What the connected view shows
Once connected, the Connect tab displays your integration details:
- •Phone number — the WhatsApp Business number currently linked.
- •Phone number ID — the Meta API identifier for the number.
- •WhatsApp Business Account ID — your WABA identifier.
- •Connected at — when the integration was first authorised.
- •Status — shows "Live — Replying" when the integration is active.
- •Check Now — a manual health-check button that re-verifies the connection with Meta on demand and updates the status and "Last checked" timestamp immediately, without waiting for the next scheduled check.
Stats tab
The Stats tab shows real-time usage for this channel:
| Metric | What it measures |
|---|---|
| Messages received | Total WhatsApp messages forwarded to the agent. |
| AI replies | Count of replies the agent sent back. |
| Reply rate | Percentage of received messages that got a reply. |
| Last message | Timestamp of the most recent inbound message. |
| 14-day chart | Daily message volume bar chart for the past two weeks. |
| Message log | Paginated list of message/reply pairs with sender and timestamps. |
Rich media and voice messages
The agent isn't limited to plain text on WhatsApp. It receives and processes the message types WhatsApp supports:
- •Images — downloaded and described by AI (up to 5MB) so the agent can answer questions about what's in a photo, like a product or a screenshot of an error.
- •Voice notes — downloaded and automatically transcribed (up to 25MB); the transcript is used as the customer's message.
- •Documents — PDF, Word, plain text, CSV and JSON files (up to 10MB) have their text extracted so the agent can read and answer questions about the contents.
- •Video, location and contact cards — recognised and logged in the conversation.
- •Interactive button and list replies — when a customer taps a button or list option the agent sent, the selected label is understood as their reply.
Inbox & human handoff
The Connect tab includes an Inbox listing every WhatsApp conversation for this agent, with counts for conversations that need attention:
- •Needs attention — conversations where a customer has asked for a human or is waiting on one.
- •Human active — conversations a teammate has already taken over from the agent.
- •SLA breached — conversations that have gone past your response-time target without a human reply. The Inbox list is sorted so these surface first.
See Human Handoff for how escalation rules and response-time targets are configured.
Campaigns & Templates
Once WhatsApp is connected, a Campaigns & Templates area becomes available under the WhatsApp section of your agent. Sync your approved Message Templates from Meta, then build a campaign that sends a template-based broadcast to a list of opted-in contacts — the tool business-initiated outreach outside the 24-hour customer service window relies on. This is a fuller feature than these docs cover in depth; treat this section as a pointer to where it lives.
Disconnecting WhatsApp
Click Disconnect on the Connect tab. This immediately stops the agent from replying to WhatsApp messages. Your message history and stats are preserved — you can reconnect at any time to resume. When reconnecting, re-run the OAuth flow to issue a fresh access token.
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