WhatsApp Business

Where: Settings → Integrations → WhatsApp (admin only). Conversations appear on the lead's Activity tab in Sales → CRM Pipeline.

Connect your company's own WhatsApp Business number and ZAPTIZ gains three things:

1. Send on WhatsApp next to Print and Email on every document.
2. Automatic lead capture — an unknown number that messages you becomes a lead, and every message lands on that lead's timeline.
3. An optional AI sales agent that answers first-line questions and hands over to a human.

WhatsApp is a channel, not a screen

ZAPTIZ has no WhatsApp inbox, and that's deliberate. A separate chat screen would compete with WhatsApp Web — which is free, faster, and already on everyone's phone — while splitting the customer's story in two: the conversation on one screen, the deal on another.

Instead, messages land on the customer's record, next to their quotation, their BOM and their invoice. Your team keeps chatting in WhatsApp itself; ZAPTIZ keeps the history, creates the leads, sends the documents and runs the agents.

First, the one rule that explains everything

WhatsApp is not email. Meta lets a business send a free-form message only during the 24 hours after the customer's last message to you. Outside that window, the only thing WhatsApp will accept is a pre-approved template.

Your own outbound messages never open or extend the window — only a new message from the customer does.

Situation	What ZAPTIZ sends	Cost
Sending a quotation the customer just asked for	the PDF with a caption	free
Sending an invoice out of the blue	an approved template carrying the PDF	billable by Meta
Collections / follow-up agent chasing someone	the template you configured for that agent	billable by Meta
The sales agent replying to an inbound message	free-form — that message just opened the window	free

ZAPTIZ decides which of the two it is at send time, on the server. You never have to work it out yourself — but it explains why sending a document occasionally asks you to pick a template.

Connecting your number (admin)

You connect your own WhatsApp Business account, so messages go out under your brand and number. ZAPTIZ never sends tenant messages from a shared platform number.

You'll need a Meta WhatsApp Business account and, from the Meta app dashboard:

Field	Where it comes from
Permanent access token	Meta → System user → generate token
Phone number ID	WhatsApp → API setup
WhatsApp Business Account (WABA) ID	WhatsApp → API setup
App ID and App secret	App → Settings → Basic
Webhook verify token	any string you choose — you'll paste the same one into Meta

Then:

1. Paste the credentials and save. The card shows Connected with your number, verified name, quality rating and who connected it.
2. Copy the webhook URL shown on the page into Meta's webhook configuration with the same verify token, and subscribe to the messages field.
3. Click Sync templates to pull your approved templates into ZAPTIZ.
4. Click Send test message to a number that has messaged you, to confirm the whole path works.

Templates are approved by Meta, not by us

ZAPTIZ can only use templates your WhatsApp Business account already has approved. In particular, only a template whose header type is DOCUMENT can carry a PDF — without one, you can't send a quotation or invoice outside the 24-hour window. The settings page tells you this up front rather than letting you discover it at send time.

Who is this number?

On the first inbound message ZAPTIZ works out who's messaging, matching on the last 10 digits of the phone number — so 9812345678, +91 98123 45678 and 919812345678 are all the same person. It resolves to one of three things:

1. an existing customer (their number, or their primary contact's);
2. an existing open lead;
3. nobody we know yet → a new lead is created with source WhatsApp and their first message saved as the qualification note.

Closed leads (won, lost, dropped) are deliberately ignored — a customer who comes back next year starts a fresh enquiry instead of reopening an old deal.

From then on, every message in and out is written to that lead's Activity timeline, so anyone opening the lead sees the whole conversation alongside the drawings, BOMs and quotations attached to it.

Sending documents on WhatsApp

Wherever you see Print and Email — quotations, invoices, purchase orders, delivery notes and the rest — you'll also see WhatsApp, as long as your company has connected a number. (If not, the button simply isn't shown.)

The dialog pre-fills the customer's or vendor's number, lets you add a caption, and sends the PDF. Inside the window it goes as a plain document message; outside it, the dialog switches to template mode and asks which approved template to use.

Sending a quotation on WhatsApp marks it Sent, exactly like emailing it does.

If a send can't happen you get a plain reason rather than a Meta error code — the contact opted out, no template was named, the chosen template can't carry a document, or the company hasn't connected WhatsApp. Every attempt is logged either way, including the failures, so "we did WhatsApp that invoice and it bounced" is answerable.

Agents on WhatsApp

The Follow-up Agent and Collections Agent can chase on WhatsApp as well as by email — but only once an admin names the template each one should use, in Settings → Integrations → WhatsApp.

That's deliberate: configuration is the opt-in. No template named means the agent quietly stays on email. Nobody's customers start getting WhatsApp messages because a default was switched on somewhere.

The AI sales agent

This agent answers inbound WhatsApp messages by itself. It is the only agent in the product that speaks to a customer directly under your brand — so it ships off, and stays narrow.

Turn it on in Settings → Integrations → WhatsApp → Sales agent, where you can also set your business hours and a tone note (e.g. "Warm and brief; always offer a site visit").

It answers only when all four are true:

1. You switched it on.
2. Nobody has been assigned the conversation.
3. The 24-hour window is open — the agent will never reach for a paid template.
4. Your AI credits and rate limits allow it.

It can only speak from facts. It's given your priced products and that customer's own quotations, orders and invoices — and it's forbidden from inventing a price, a stock figure, a lead time or a delivery date. Quoting prices is a second switch, also off by default: with it off, prices never even reach the agent.

Escalation is real, not a phrase. When it hands over, it assigns the conversation to a person — the lead's owner, or a sales user, or an admin — notes why on the lead, and sends them a notification that opens that lead's workspace. Because assignment is gate 2, it then stops replying. Complaints and price negotiations always escalate, whatever the model thinks.

It fails safely. If the AI is unavailable or produces nothing usable, the customer still gets a holding reply and a human is brought in. Silence is the one outcome that isn't allowed.

Start with it off

Watch the leads arrive for a week first. You'll see the questions that actually come in, and you can judge whether letting the agent handle the easy half is worth it — with prices switched off until you trust it.

Replying by hand

ZAPTIZ sends documents and runs the agents. For a personal reply, your team answers from WhatsApp itself on their phone or WhatsApp Web — where they are already fast.

A reply box on the lead's own Conversation tab is planned, so a rep can answer without leaving the deal. Until then, the timeline is the record; WhatsApp is the keyboard.

Broadcasts

Messaging a group of customers is Campaigns, not this page. The engine sends on WhatsApp as well as email, with the same audiences, pre-flight and per-person tracking — subject to two Meta rules: a bulk message must use an approved template, and the send is refused if it would exceed your number's messaging tier (the daily cap Meta assigns your number, which rises as you send well).

The Campaigns screen currently creates email campaigns; picking WhatsApp as the channel is the next step there.

Not available yet

• Choosing WhatsApp as a campaign channel in the Campaigns screen — see above.
• Replying from inside ZAPTIZ — see Replying by hand.
• Media the customer sends — an image or PDF a customer sends shows on the timeline as [image] / [document]; the file itself isn't stored in ZAPTIZ yet.