Connect Telegram
Create a Telegram bot with @BotFather, connect it to APROS, and answer clients who write to the bot from your Chat inbox.
Connect a Telegram bot as a client channel. When someone writes to the bot, the conversation appears in Chat and your team replies from APROS; replies go back through the bot.
This is the channel for clients. The company's internal bot for employee notifications and the Telegram Mini App is a different setting: Settings → System → Telegram Bot. Don't use the same bot for both.
Before you begin
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A Telegram account, to create the bot.
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These permissions:
Permission What it allows CREATE_CHANNELConnect the bot. UPDATE_CHANNELChange the channel's settings, test it, attach an AI agent. DELETE_CHANNELDelete the channel. MANAGE_CHATChange Chat & Channels settings, such as automatic lead creation. -
The Sales module is on. Channels are on the Marketplace page, which needs the Commerce module.
1. Create a bot in Telegram
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In Telegram, open @BotFather.
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Send
/newbot. -
Choose a name for the bot. Clients see this name, for example Acme Support.
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Choose a username. It must end with
bot, for exampleacme_support_bot. -
BotFather sends you a token that looks like
123456789:ABCdefGHIjklMNOpqrsTUVwxyz. Copy it.
Anyone with the token controls the bot. Keep it private and don't paste it anywhere except APROS.
2. Connect the bot to APROS
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In the sidebar, click Marketplace, open the Channels tab and click Telegram. The Connect Telegram Bot panel opens.
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Paste the token into Bot Token and click Validate. APROS checks the token with Telegram and shows the bot's name, its @username and Bot ID.
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Enter a Channel Name, for example Client support. Your team sees this name in APROS.
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Click Create Channel.
APROS registers the bot with Telegram so that messages are delivered to your workspace. The panel then shows your channels under Active Channels.
Check the channel's status in the list, or on the Telegram card in Marketplace:
- Active (on the card: Connected) — messages are being delivered.
- Error — the channel was created, but Telegram did not accept the delivery address. See Troubleshooting.
3. Answer clients
When someone writes to your bot:
- A conversation appears in Chat under the Clients tab, one per Telegram chat. Text, photos, documents, audio, voice messages, video and stickers come through.
- If the person isn't already a lead or contact in APROS, APROS creates a lead with the source Telegram. To turn this off, go to Settings → Chat & Channels and clear Auto-create leads.
- Your replies from the inbox go out through the bot. By default each reply starts with the operator's name; to change that, use Show operator name in messages in the same settings.
Clients start the conversation: a conversation appears in APROS when a client writes to the bot.
Change the channel's settings
- Go to Marketplace → Channels → Telegram, then click the back arrow (Back to channels) to see the list of Messaging channels.
- Hover over your channel and click Settings.
In the channel's settings you can:
- rename the channel or change its Status on the General tab, then click Save Changes;
- set a Welcome Message that the bot sends when someone writes for the first time;
- attach an AI Agent that answers as First Line, works as an Assistant to your operators, or handles conversations as Autonomous, with Escalation keywords that hand the conversation to a person.
While a channel's status is Inactive, messages that clients send to the bot are not stored and are not delivered later. To pause a channel without losing messages, keep it Active and simply don't reply.
Disconnect Telegram
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Open the channel's settings (see above).
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Under Danger Zone, click Delete, then confirm with Delete Channel.
APROS stops receiving the bot's messages and removes the delivery address from Telegram. Existing conversations stay in Chat. The bot itself still exists in Telegram; delete it with @BotFather if you no longer need it.
Troubleshooting
Validate fails. Copy the token again from @BotFather. A token contains a colon and belongs to a bot, not to a personal account. The error message names the reason (in English).
The channel shows Error. Open the channel's settings. The Message delivery (webhook) panel says what is wrong. Click Re-register webhook to try again, or Test Connection to check both the token and the delivery.
Messages stopped arriving after the bot was connected somewhere else. Telegram delivers a bot's messages to one place only. If the same bot is also connected elsewhere — another channel, the internal company bot, or another service — messages may stop reaching this channel. Use a separate bot for each place, then click Re-register webhook here.