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Setting Up Telegram

Connect a Telegram bot to your Intercom workspace so customer messages arrive in Intercom and replies go back on Telegram.

Written by Tarek Khalil

Before you start

You need:

  • A Telegram account. Any regular personal Telegram account can create bots.

  • The bot token you’ll get from BotFather (covered below).

  • Admin access to the Octopods workspace.

Telegram connections are the simplest channel to set up — there are no OAuth flows or third-party sign-ins. If you’ve never connected a channel before, Telegram is a good first choice.

Step 1: Create a Telegram bot

  1. On your phone or desktop, open Telegram and search for the user @BotFather. Start a chat with it.

  2. Send the command /newbot.

  3. BotFather asks for a display name for the bot (any readable name, such as “Acme Support”). Send it.

  4. BotFather then asks for a username. It must end in bot (for example, acmesupport_bot) and must be globally unique on Telegram.

  5. BotFather replies with a confirmation and the bot’s HTTP API token — a long string that looks like 123456789:ABCdefGhIJKlmnOPQrstuvWXYz. Copy this token.

Warning: Treat the bot token like a password. Anyone with it can send messages as your bot and read incoming messages. Do not share it publicly or post it in a forum.

Tip: If you want to customize the bot’s profile picture, description, or about text, send BotFather /setuserpic, /setdescription, or /setabouttext before connecting it to Octopods. You can change these later too.

Step 2: Start the Telegram channel setup

  1. In Octopods, open the workspace you want to add Telegram to.

  2. Click the option to add a new channel.

  3. In the Add a Channel modal, select Telegram under Popular Channels.

  4. A Telegram setup panel opens with a Telegram Bot Token field and an optional Friendly Name field.

Step 3: Paste the bot token

  1. Paste the token you copied from BotFather into the Telegram Bot Token field.

  2. Optionally give the channel a Friendly Name to identify it quickly in the channel list.

  3. Click Activate Telegram Channel.

Octopods now:

  • Validates the token by calling Telegram’s API for the bot’s profile.

  • Retrieves the bot’s username and display name automatically — you don’t need to type them.

  • Registers a webhook with Telegram so all messages sent to the bot are forwarded to Octopods.

On success, the Telegram channel appears in your channel list with a Connected status.

Step 4: Send a test message

  1. Open Telegram on your phone or desktop.

  2. Search for your bot’s username (the one ending in bot) and start a chat with it.

  3. Send a short message like hello.

  4. Open the Intercom Inbox for this workspace. A new conversation appears with your message.

  5. Reply from Intercom.

  6. The reply arrives in your Telegram chat from the bot.

After activation

  • The channel is ready for inbound messages, outbound replies, proactive messages, and broadcasts.

  • Telegram bots cannot initiate a conversation with a user who hasn’t messaged the bot first — that’s a Telegram platform rule. Your customers need to find the bot and send it a message (or tap a link to the bot) before you can message them.

  • Interactive messages with inline keyboards and reply buttons are supported through the Octopods API. See Sending Telegram Interactive Messages.

Common issues

  • “Invalid token” — double-check you copied the full token from BotFather, including everything after the colon. Tokens do not contain spaces.

  • Bot no longer responds — if you ran /revoke in BotFather, the old token is dead. Generate a new token in BotFather, open the channel’s detail page in Octopods, and re-enter the new token.

  • Messages don’t appear in Intercom — use the channel’s reconnect or re-register action. Telegram webhooks can silently get overwritten if the same bot token is used in another tool.

What’s next

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