reply-chain
Open settings

Getting started

Prerequisites

Gather these four things before you start configuring. Each one is needed during setup, and having them ready up front makes the rest a single sitting.

Two Telegram bots

reply-chain uses two separate bots, both created through Telegram's BotFather:

  • Customer-facing bot — what your customers message to start an enquiry.
  • Internal bot — what your team uses to receive forwarded enquiries and post quote replies.

Getting a bot token from BotFather

Do this twice — once for the customer-facing bot, once for the internal bot:

  1. In Telegram, open a chat with @BotFather (the official, verified account) and press Start.
  2. Send /newbot.
  3. Give the bot a display name when asked (e.g. RC Movers) — this is what customers see.
  4. Give it a username ending in bot (e.g. rcmovers_bot). It must be unique across Telegram.
  5. BotFather replies with your token — 123456789:ABCdef…. Copy it.

Repeat for the second bot. You'll paste both tokens into the operator card during setup.

Lost a token? Open @BotFather, send /mybots, pick the bot, then API Token to view it again — or Revoke current token to issue a fresh one (the old token stops working immediately).

Treat tokens like passwords

A bot token grants full control of that bot. Don't share them or commit them anywhere public. You only ever enter them into your reply-chain settings page.

An internal channel

Create a Telegram channel or group for your team and add the internal bot to it as an admin. This is where forwarded enquiries appear and where you reply with quotes.

You'll need the channel's chat ID — a signed number, negative for channels (for example -1003745619905). To find it, send any message in the channel, then open this URL in a browser (swap in your internal bot token):

bash
https://api.telegram.org/bot<INTERNAL_BOT_TOKEN>/getUpdates

Read result[0].channel_post.chat.idfrom the response — that's your internal chat ID.

A Google account

Any Google account with a calendar works — a personal Gmail account or a Google Workspace account. The connection is per-user, so Workspace isn't required. You'll authorize reply-chain to read your calendar and pick which calendar bookings should land on.

Your reply-chain account

Finally, you'll sign up on the reply-chain app itself with an email and password. That account is what ties all of the above together. Continue to Sign in to create it.