Creating WhatsApp Templates

Say we wanted to create a WhatsApp Template with this text:

Dear {{1}}, welcome to our site! Please say hello if you receive this message.

You can create WhatsApp templates in 2 ways:

1. Using our App
2. Using the WhatsApp Administrator at the Facebook for Business site

1.- Creating the WhatsApp template using our App

To do this, go Templates, then click on add:

Then fill in the form:

• Template name: Say Hello
• Template name on Facebook: say_hello
• Template language: English (en)
• Template body text: Dear {{1}}, welcome to our site! Please say hello if you receive this message.
• Variable example 1: John

It should look like this:

Then click Save. 

Once you have done it, you will see a table with your active namespaces. Click Sync.

Now your template is ready to use. You should receive an email like this in your WhatsApp Administrator´s email account:

After this, if you visit the WhatsApp Administrator, you will see your template in the list, just like if you created it manually:

If your template is rejected, you will also get an email from Facebook. In that case, you need to remove the template and create a new one. Here are the template policies by Facebook.

2.- Creating templates using the WhatsApp Administrator

To create the WhatsApp template, go to https://business.facebook.com/ . Go to Configuration - More Configuration Options - Business Configuration - Whatsapp Accounts. Then, in the Configuration tab, click on WhatsApp Administration.

Alternatively, you can click this link: https://business.facebook.com/wa/manage/home. It will take you to the same website, after logging in with Facebook.

Once in the Facebook Administration site, go to the section Message Templates, that you will find in the left menu. You must see something like this:

Click on the button Create Message Template. You will see this:

Choose a category (in this case, it could be Account updates, for example). Then choose a name, something like "welcome_to_our_app" (Facebook will put everything in lower case and spaces will be replaced with low dashes).

Under language, please choose only one. In our example case, we used English. If your template is in English, choose only English in general, not UK English, US English or other regional English. Only use the general language option. If you need to support multiple languages, make a different template for each.

Once you have entered this, you can click Continue, at the upper right of the screen. Then you will be able to enter the text and other options:

Once you're happy with it, click Send.

After doing this, Facebook will review your template. After being accepted, the template can be used to deliver notifications to clients.

The reviewing process by Facebook can take up to 1 day. Be sure not to send notifications if the template has not been approved; the notification will fail.

Now your template is ready to be used. For example, you can use it to send a single notification, by navigating to Deliveries - Single messages, and filing out the form:

And when you do that, you will see that:

• The Facebook Template Name and Language code will be filled for you
• The template text will be accessible by clicking on the Show text link

You can use it to send bulk messages too (Messages - Bulk messages):

If you send your messages using templates, you will see the text in your Zendesk ticket:

And in the ticket sidebar:

Advanced use cases

• Templates with documents.
• Templates with images
• Templates with videos
• Templates with a header variable.