> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.thinnest.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# WhatsApp

> The same agent, answering on WhatsApp — plus what Meta's rules mean for you.

WhatsApp is the channel most Indian businesses actually want, and it has rules
that are not ours. This page is mostly about those rules, because they shape
everything you can do.

## Connecting

**Connect WABA**, at the top of the WhatsApp section in the sidebar. Both
buttons there open Meta's own signup — one if you are applying for a WhatsApp
Business Account, one if you already have it. You sign in with your Facebook
account and choose the number. We never see your login, and the account stays
yours: you can move it to another provider whenever you want.

<Warning>
  **Connecting is open to selected workspaces while Meta reviews our app.** Both
  buttons are switched off until that clears, and we will turn yours on as soon
  as it does. Nothing you set up in the meantime is lost.
</Warning>

### The account is your workspace's; the number belongs to an agent

Your WhatsApp Business Account belongs to your **business**, not to any one
agent — so it is connected once, for the whole workspace, and every agent works
against it.

A **number** is different. It answers for exactly one agent, because a message
arrives at a number and something has to decide which agent replies.

So connecting and assigning are two steps, and the second one is yours to make:

1. Connect your account on **Connect WABA**. The number arrives with no agent.
2. Give it one — from that same page, or from the agent's own **Channels** page.

<Note>
  **A number with no agent still receives.** Messages arrive in your
  [inbox](/workspace/inbox) and wait for a person; nothing answers on its own
  until you have said who should. That is deliberate — an agent replying from a
  number nobody chose it for is worse than a message waiting a few minutes.

  Give the number an agent and **the messages that were waiting become theirs**,
  so nothing from your first day is stranded.
</Note>

<Note>
  Moving a number from one agent to **another** works the other way round: the
  agent that had it loses it, but **conversations already open stay with the
  agent handling them** — nobody mid-conversation is suddenly answered by a
  different agent. New conversations go to the agent that took it.
</Note>

<Tip>
  You can also answer from an unassigned number before you have chosen one: send
  a template from [Send](/whatsapp/send) and pick a **handler**, and that agent
  answers that conversation when the customer writes back.
</Tip>

Several numbers on one account is fine. Connect each one and give each its own
agent.

### Your click-to-chat link

Every connected number has one, on the **Connect WABA** page. It opens a
WhatsApp chat with you, and it needs no integration — put it in an Instagram
bio, behind a button on your site, in an email footer, on a printed sign.

You can set what their message already says. That matters more than it sounds:
an empty chat asks somebody to think of an opening line, which is where most of
them stop. And if you word it differently per place you put the link, the first
thing they send tells you where they came from.

### The same link as a QR code

Underneath the link is a QR code for it, and **Download PNG** saves a
print-quality copy. Point a phone camera at it and it opens the same chat, with
the same message already typed.

It is for the places a link cannot go: a counter card, a menu, a packing slip, a
poster in the window, the back of a business card. The code changes as you edit
the message above it, so download it after you have worded it, not before.

<Tip>
  Give each place its own code with its own opening message — "Table 4",
  "Ordered from the catalogue", "Saw the window poster". The message people send
  you is then also the answer to where they were standing, and you never have to
  ask.
</Tip>

### Disconnecting

**Disconnect** on the Connect WABA page stops a number sending and receiving.
Your WhatsApp Business Account is untouched — it is yours, and disconnecting
here does not close it.

<Note>
  **Your conversations are kept.** Everything that number sent and received stays
  in your inbox and stays searchable. Disconnecting ends the connection, not the
  history.
</Note>

## Before a number is connected

Templates, Forms and Send are **read-only** until one is. You can read what is
there, and the pre-built template and form libraries, but nothing can be
written, submitted or sent — all three end at Meta, and until an account is
connected there is nothing to send them to.

## The 24-hour window

This is the single rule to understand. [Meta's rules](/meta/overview) covers it
and the rest in depth.

* When a customer messages you, a **24-hour window** opens. Inside it, the agent
  can reply freely, in its own words.
* Outside it, **nothing but an approved template** reaches that customer.

So the agent handles conversations; [templates](/whatsapp/templates) handle
anything you start.

## What the agent does here

The same knowledge, instructions and tools as your website widget. Cards and
buttons render as native WhatsApp messages rather than degrading to text.

Delivery and read receipts arrive afterwards and show in the inbox — sent,
delivered, read and failed are four different facts, each with Meta's own
reason where one applies.

## Free entry point

When a customer arrives from a **click-to-WhatsApp ad** and you reply within 24
hours, Meta does not charge for that conversation for 72 hours. The platform
tracks this and it shows in your usage.

## Opting out

A customer can turn off "Offers and announcements" in WhatsApp itself, or simply
tell your agent to stop. Either way they are recorded as withdrawn and marketing
templates to them are refused.

Utility and authentication messages still reach them, and must — an order
confirmation is not something anybody opted out of.

## Calls

A customer's WhatsApp call appears in the thread with its outcome and duration.

<Warning>
  **No AI answers the call.** Calls are recorded as events in the conversation,
  nothing more. Anyone telling you this platform answers your phone is
  describing something that does not exist.
</Warning>

## Not built

* **Catalogues.** Inbound order messages parse, but there is no catalogue
  browsing.
* **Publishing a form** before Meta has verified your business. Forms build,
  store and preview now; Meta will not publish a flow for an unverified
  business, and an unpublished form reaches nobody.
* **One-time password templates**, which are behind the same verification gate.