Templates

Outside the 24-hour window WhatsApp carries nothing but an approved template. Everything you start — a campaign, an order update, a reminder — is a template. Once one is approved you can put it in a broadcast, fire it from the API, or send it to a few numbers by hand.

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The three categories

Getting the category wrong is the most expensive mistake here. A marketing template refused for opted-out contacts is correct behaviour, not a bug.

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Already have templates? Import them

If you were using WhatsApp before you came here, your approved templates are still on your WhatsApp Business Account — and Import from Meta, at the top of the Templates page, brings them in. They arrive with their wording, their examples, their buttons and their approval status intact, ready to send. Pressing it again is safe: a template you already have is refreshed rather than duplicated, which is also how you pick up a status Meta has changed since.

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You need a connected number first

Templates are submitted to your WhatsApp Business Account, so until one is connected there is nothing to submit them to. This page is read-only until then — you can read what is here and browse the pre-built templates, but writing, submitting, editing and adding a language all wait. Connect WhatsApp is the first thing in the WhatsApp section of the sidebar, and takes a few minutes.

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Writing one

The editor writes the template and submits it to Meta for approval. Approval typically takes minutes but is Meta’s decision, not ours — see Template review and approval for what gets rejected and why. Placeholders are numbered: {{1}}, {{2}}. Each one is bound at send time to a contact field or one fixed string — and a template with a placeholder cannot go out with it empty.

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Languages and variants

A template name can exist in several languages. When you send, the contact’s language decides which variant they receive. A contact with no language set receives your default — so adding languages is always an improvement and never a prerequisite.

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Buttons

Templates can carry quick replies and link buttons. A link button’s blank is sent separately from the body’s blanks — Meta wants it in a different component, and putting it in the body’s list breaks both the words and the link. A button’s label can be up to 25 characters — WhatsApp’s limit. The label box counts as you type (12/25) and stops at 25.

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Carousels

A carousel is a message followed by 2 to 10 swipeable cards, each with its own picture (or video), text and the same buttons. Two things decide whether Meta accepts one:

• Each card’s picture must be a direct link to the image itself — one that opens just the picture, usually ending in .jpg or .png. A Google Drive or Dropbox share link opens a web page about the file, not the file, so it is refused before anything is sent, and the message names the card.
• Pick the language the text is written in. A carousel written in Telugu should be a Telugu template; Meta reviews the language you choose against the words.
• It must be a Marketing template. WhatsApp doesn’t allow carousels as Utility.
• It has no footer. WhatsApp allows nothing above the cards except the message itself. A marketing carousel still needs a way out, so end the message with a line like “Reply STOP to opt out” (in any language, as long as it contains the word STOP in capitals), or give the cards a “Stop promotions” quick reply.
• Its buttons go on the cards. Leave the Buttons section under the message empty; a carousel can’t have buttons there.
• Each card’s text is up to 160 characters. The box counts as you type.

All of these are checked when you save, edit and submit, so you find out here, in plain words, rather than from Meta. Each card has one or two buttons, and every card has the same ones — a quick reply, a link or a call. A link button can go somewhere different on each card, but each card’s link is a fixed web address: it can’t contain a blank like {{1}}, since nothing fills one in when the carousel is sent.

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Sending one

An approved template’s card carries Send broadcast. It opens the broadcast composer with that template already chosen, so the template you just got approved is one click from reaching somebody. For a single customer rather than a list, use Send; from your own systems, the messages API.

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Letting an agent send a template

Your agent can send an approved template during a call or chat when a customer asks for something (a renewal link, your address, a documents list). You decide which templates it may use. Two things keep a template out:

• A blank in a link button. A button like yoursite.com/{{1}} needs a value for the blank, and an agent can’t fill one. Use a fixed link, and put anything that changes in the message text.
• Not being Utility. Marketing and authentication templates can’t be ticked.

New templates start unticked. Templates you already had when this was added were ticked for you, apart from any with a blank in a link button. Each message the agent sends is charged like any other template you send, and the agent may send two an hour in one conversation.

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Forms

A template button can open a form — an address, a booking, a return. That is how you collect structured information from somebody who has not messaged you recently. Answers come back into the conversation and are stored against it, so they are readable in the inbox and available afterwards as structured data rather than as words in a transcript.

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Deleting one

A draft that was never submitted has neither consequence: Meta has never seen it, so nothing is using it and the name stays free.

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Template quality

Meta scores every approved template on how people react to it — green, yellow, red — and tells us when the score changes. You are warned at yellow, on the template and by notification, while there is still something you can do about it. Red is not a warning. Meta pauses a red template, and a paused template sends nothing, so the yellow is the message that matters. The usual causes are blocks and “report” taps from people who did not expect to hear from you: a marketing template sent too often, or to a list that never really opted in.