Help›Message chains

Chain messages: pauses, conditions, buttons

How a single chain message works — when it goes out, who gets it and what is inside.

The messages are the chain. Each one knows three things: when to go out, who gets it and what it says. Here they are in order.

The list of messages

The step is called Messages and comes after the Other chains step. Under the heading it says: “Every message is its own step: when, conditions, and the message itself.” Then comes the list and a dashed Add a message row.

Every message has a name, the first row on its page. A new message already has “Message 2” in the field (the number it got when added; it does not change when other messages are deleted); type your own, say “Warm-up after the webinar”, and it becomes the page title and the list row. The name is for you only: the client never sees it.

A list row sums the message up: “Message 2 · in 2 days · no label “bought” · How is it going?…”. Tapping it opens the message page; a red Delete button sits at the bottom. Before deleting you are asked “Delete the message?” — confirm with Delete or tap Cancel. In the list edit mode (Edit) a message is deleted right away, without a question.

A new message joins the list the moment you tap Add a message. Every field of it saves itself: set up Name, When or Conditions — the value is already stored, and the Done button at the bottom closes the sheet. If you leave the page of a new message without changing anything in it, it disappears from the list by itself.

A chain holds up to twenty messages. The last one cannot be deleted — a chain without a message is not a chain. Messages can be reordered: the order in the list is the order they go out. Reordering does not hurt people who are already receiving the chain — nothing they already got comes twice.

A message page: three rows

When — the pause before this message.
Conditions — who it goes to.
Message — the text, image and buttons themselves.

The number and the unit in When are picked with wheels by swiping; conditions are ticked in the list. The value is stored right away; the Done button at the bottom returns you to the message.

When

For the first message the pause counts from the moment the user enters the chain. It starts as “Right after the start”, meaning the user joins and gets the first message immediately. You can add a pause instead: “How long after the start” plus “Counted in” — minutes, hours or days.
For the rest the pause counts from the previous message: “After” and “Counted in”. One day by default.

In the row the pause is spelled out: “Right after the start”, “in 2 days”, “in 6 hours”, “in 5 minutes”.

Conditions

By default the row reads No conditions — the message goes to everyone who got that far. Conditions matter when part of your audience should stop hearing from you: someone who already bought does not need three more nudges.

There are three conditions, ticked on the Conditions sheet:

Went through the bot — the user talked to the bots you pick;
Has the label — the user has all the labels you tick;
No label — none of the ticked labels.

The hint on screen says the important part: “Checked when the message is due: no match — the user leaves the chain.” In other words the condition is not checked on entry but at the moment this message falls due. No match and the chain is over for that user — no further messages. There is deliberately no list of users on this screen: nobody can know today who will match in three days.

If the chain is already running, the top of the screen shows how many people are receiving its messages right now.

Conditions do not carry over from one message to the next. Every message has its own.

Message

This opens the message window — a prototype of what the user will receive: one bubble, Telegram-style, with three slots in it: Add a photo, video or file, Write a message (or Write a caption when there is an image on top) and Add button.

The window is the same for a chain and for a one-off broadcast, and everything about it — the kinds of attachment, text formatting, button rows and button colours — is in a separate article: The message window.

What matters here: what you put together in the window applies at once — there is no tick in its header — and the message itself is kept by the message page’s Done.

One chain message is one Telegram message: the window will not let you build two out of it, the Done button simply stays off.

The Message row shows the first line of the text. If the message is not ready yet, the reason is written there: “Not filled in”, “The file is still uploading”, “The file was not uploaded” or “Does not fit into one message”. The Done button on its page will not let such a message go, and the form will not move on: “Message 2 · Write the message”.

Buttons under a message

The button page is built from cards, one under another. The first one holds three rows with their values: Label, Placement and Colour; tap a row and a sheet opens where the value is changed. Below is the What it does card: four kinds with a tick, right on the page. Pick a kind and its settings appear underneath at once. At the very bottom is Delete button.

Label is what the user sees on the button. Until you write it, the row reads “No label”.

What it does offers four kinds:

Open a link — the user taps it and a page opens. The Address field takes the full page address, including https://. An empty address, or one that does not look like an address, is not accepted: we say “Check the address”.
Add a label — the user taps it and you learn they are interested. The Label row opens the list of your labels: at the top is the “Add a label” field — type a name and press enter, and the label is created and ticked at once. Tapping a label ticks it, tapping it again unticks it; one button carries one label. The “Edit” button above the list turns on editing: the red circle next to a row opens “Delete”, and the label disappears from all your users at once — it is shared, not owned by this button. This is an ordinary label of yours: it shows on the user’s card, you can select users by it in filters, folders and the “Who gets it” conditions of the next messages, and another chain can start on it (the “Got the label” trigger). Below it is the switch “End this chain”: turn it on, and one tap moves the user to another chain — the label starts it, and this one ends for them.
Unsubscribe — the user taps it and you stop writing to them. Unsubscribe from: “This chain only” (they keep receiving your other messages) or “Everything” (no messages and no broadcasts until you turn it back on yourself).
Open a mini app — the user taps it and the page opens right inside Telegram, without leaving the chat. The Mini app address field takes the full address, including https://. Works only in a private chat with the bot.

“Add a label” and “Unsubscribe” buttons also have a What to reply row — a short note that pops up at the top of the user’s chat right after the tap (“Got it”, “We won’t write again”). Leave it empty and the tap passes silently.

Switching the kind does not wipe the other settings: come back to the previous one and the address, the label and the reply come back with it. Only what belongs to the chosen kind goes into the message.

Placement and Colour are covered in The message window.

The rule is the same everywhere: the tick in the top right saves, the cross closes without saving. That holds both for a single row’s sheet and for the button page as a whole — leave the page without the tick and no button appears, while an existing one stays as it was.