Send messages

Learn how to send messages in an API channel within Bevatel by creating contacts, conversations, and messages with the help of API access tokens and structured payloads for efficient communication.

Send messages to the API channel

To send messages to the API channel, you need to have a basic understanding of the models and nomenclature used in Bevatel. Let us try to understand these first.

1. Channel: Channel defines the type of the source of conversations. E.g.: Facebook, Twitter, API, etc.

2. Inbox: You can create multiple sources of conversations which is of the same channel type. For eg: You can have more than one Facebook page connected to a Bevatel account. Each page is called as the inbox in Bevatel.

3. Conversation: A Conversation is a collection of messages.

4. Contact: Each conversation has a real-life person associated with it, this person is called a contact.

5. Contact Inboxes: This is the session for each contact on an inbox. A contact can have multiple sessions and multiple conversations in the same inbox.

How to send a message in an API Channel?​

To send a message in an API channel, you have to create a contact, then create a conversation, and then send a message.

APIs require api_access_token in the request header. You can get this token by visiting your Profile settings > Access Token

1. Create a contact​

Pass the inbox ID of the API channel along with other parameters specified. This would create a session for you automatically. A sample response would look like the one below.

{
  "email": "string",
  "name": "string",
  "phone_number": "string",
  "thumbnail": "string",
  "additional_attributes": {},
  "contact_inboxes": [
    {
      "source_id": "string",
      "inbox": {
        "id": 0,
        "name": "string",
        "website_url": "string",
        "channel_type": "string",
        "avatar_url": "string",
        "widget_color": "string",
        "website_token": "string",
        "enable_auto_assignment": true,
        "web_widget_script": "string",
        "welcome_title": "string",
        "welcome_tagline": "string",
        "greeting_enabled": true,
        "greeting_message": "string"
      }
    }
  ],
  "id": 0,
  "availability_status": "string"
}

As you can see in the payload, you will be able to see the contact_inboxes and each contact_inbox will have a source_id. Source ID can be seen as the session identifier. You will use this source_id to create a new conversation as defined below.

2. Create a conversation​

Use the source_id received in the previous API call.

You will receive a conversation id which can be used to create a message.

{
  "id": 0
}

3. Create a new message​

There are 2 types of messages.

1. Incoming: Messages sent by the end user is classified as an incoming message.

2. Outgoing: Messages sent by the agent is classified as an outgoing message.

If you call the API with the correct content, you will receive a payload similar to the one below.

{
    "id": 0,
    "content": "This is a incoming message from API Channel",
    "inbox_id": 0,
    "conversation_id": 0,
    "message_type": 0,
    "content_type": null,
    "content_attributes": {},
    "created_at": 0,
    "private": false,
    "sender": {
        "id": 0,
        "name": "Pranav",
        "type": "contact"
    }
}

If everything is successful you will see the conversation on the dashboard as follows.

You will be notified when a new message is created on the URL specified while creating the API channel. You can read about the message payload here.