# Connect Telegram for team alerts | Busymate AI Source: https://busymate.ai/hi/docs/guides/telegram Last modified: 2026-09-09T18:37:25+03:00 Busymate AI uses Telegram today for your team, not your customers: a teammate links their own account once, then gets an alert wherever a conversation needs a person, and can reply from Telegram or from the Inbox. A customer-facing Telegram inbox is not open yet. ## 1. Create a bot Open Telegram, message @BotFather, and run `/newbot`. Choose a name and a username, and BotFather hands back a bot token — a long string that authenticates as your bot. Keep it private; anyone holding it can send messages as your bot. ## 2. Give the platform its credentials In [Console → Connections](https://busymate.ai/console/connections), paste the bot token and set a webhook secret — a second string only you and the platform know, checked on every incoming update so a forged request is rejected before it reaches your workspace. Neither value is shown again once saved; rotate the token with BotFather and update it here if it ever leaks. ## 3. Link your account Each teammate links their own account from their profile: request a one-time code, then send it to your bot from the Telegram account they want alerts on. The link is personal — one Telegram account per teammate, no shared login — and can be removed from the same page at any time. ## 4. What a linked teammate gets Once linked, a teammate receives a message the moment a conversation is marked for hand-off, with enough of the thread to decide whether to step in. They can reply from Telegram — it lands in the same conversation the customer sees on their own channel — or open the Inbox instead. Nothing about the customer's channel changes: a customer on the web chat still sees a web chat; Telegram is where your team is told, not where the customer wrote from. ## 5. Turning it off Remove the bot token from Connections to stop new alerts workspace-wide, or ask a teammate to unlink their own account to stop just their alerts. Both take effect immediately; conversation history is unaffected either way. ## Verify 1. Confirm the bot token and webhook secret are both saved in Connections. 2. Link your own account with a one-time code and confirm the linked status shows in your profile. 3. Mark a test conversation for hand-off and confirm the alert arrives in Telegram within a few seconds. 4. Reply from Telegram and confirm the reply appears in the same conversation in the Inbox. 5. Unlink your account and confirm alerts stop. ### Can my customers message the bot directly and reach the assistant? Not yet. The bot today is a staff alert and reply surface for your team; it is not published as an open customer inbox. ### Where do I get the bot token? From Telegram's own BotFather, using `/newbot`. The platform never issues or stores a copy anywhere but Connections. ### What is the webhook secret for? It is checked on every incoming update from Telegram, so a request that does not carry it is rejected before your workspace ever sees it. ### Can more than one teammate link an account? Yes. Each teammate links their own Telegram account separately, and each can unlink independently without affecting anyone else's alerts. ### Does replying from Telegram change what the customer sees? No. The customer's conversation stays on the channel they used; your reply simply lands in the same thread, the way any teammate reply does from the [Inbox](https://busymate.ai/hi/docs/human-handoff).