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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.
Only templates on your own account are imported. Nothing from anybody else’s reaches your workspace.

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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 WABA 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.
The header has to be fixed text. Meta allows a variable there; we do not, because nothing in the product can fill it — and a template Meta approves that can never be sent is worse than one refused while you are writing it. Put the changing part in the body.
Authentication templates are copied, not written for you. Meta writes and localises the wording for one-time passwords itself, and rewording it gets the template rejected. The editor copies Meta’s text exactly.Authentication templates are also gated behind business verification.

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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.
Competitors generally give you one language per template and leave the choosing to you. Per-contact variant selection is the difference between “we support Hindi” and “your Hindi-speaking customers get Hindi”.

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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.

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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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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.
Forms cannot be published until Meta verifies your business. They build, store and preview now; Meta will not publish a flow for an unverified business, and an unpublished form reaches nobody.Forms also cannot be filled from your data — no slot picker showing only free slots, no dropdown of that customer’s orders.

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Deleting one

Deleting an AGENT does not delete your templates. They belong to your WhatsApp Business Account rather than to one agent, so they move to whichever of your agents is oldest — along with your forms and your broadcasts. The delete dialog lists what will move before you confirm.
Deleting removes it from Meta too, not just from this list. Two consequences follow, and both are easier to know beforehand:
  • Anything sending that template — a campaign, a sequence, your own code calling the API with its name — stops working.
  • Meta will not let the name be used again for 30 days. If you are replacing a template, give the replacement a different name rather than waiting a month for the old 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.
Your number is scored separately, and that one is worse: a flagged number has its messaging limit cut, and left flagged it is restricted outright — at which point no template works, however healthy. You are warned about that too.
Per-template delivery analytics are not available yet — how many people opened a given template, or tapped its button. Meta reports button taps in WhatsApp Manager and we do not yet read them. What you can see today is per-campaign delivery and replies on the campaign report, and the quality score above.