WhatsApp puts a business number of your company inside Quanty: "Messages sent to a linked WhatsApp Business number arrive here, land in a table as rows, and can trigger an automation that answers." A message is then ordinary Quanty data: filter it, put it on a Kanban board, read it with AI columns, and let an automation or the AI Secretary answer it. With the TMS add-on, drivers send their pallet receipts the same way (see Pallet receipts from drivers).
WhatsApp in Quanty is in beta, and a number is connected together with us.
Before you start
- Plan. WhatsApp is part of the Gold plan and higher: "WhatsApp is part of Gold", with See Gold and upgrade.
- Role. Only an administrator adds, changes, pauses or removes a number, sends a test and manages templates: "Only an administrator of this organization can add, change or remove a number." Every member sees the numbers, the templates and the recent messages.
- A number your company owns, as a WhatsApp Business number. Quanty does not sell numbers.
Connecting a number, together with Quanty
Meta verifies your business first
A WhatsApp Business number is linked through Meta, which runs WhatsApp. Meta verifies the business itself, on company documents, in a review that takes days rather than minutes, and the linking signs into the Meta business account that owns the number. That is why Quanty connects a number together with you, one company at a time. Quanty sets this up for your organization; ask us.
What to prepare:
- the number, in international format, on which you can receive a verification code;
- a number that is not signed in to the WhatsApp or WhatsApp Business app (a number belongs to one of them or to the business platform);
- someone who can act for your company in its Meta business account;
- the name customers should see next to your messages: Meta reviews it.
Once Meta has verified the business and the number is linked, it appears on your WhatsApp page and an admin can Add a number (or Connect a number linked by Quanty). One number works for one organization only: "This number is already in use in another workspace."
The WhatsApp page
Open it from the WhatsApp card on the Integrations page. From top to bottom:
| Section | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Connection to WhatsApp | Whether everything is in place: Ready ("Everything WhatsApp needs is in place."), with Check again. |
| Numbers | "The WhatsApp Business numbers this workspace works with." |
| Message templates | The templates Meta reviews (see Message templates). |
| Recent messages | "The last messages that went through this number, newest first", marked Received or Sent, with Load more. |
A number
Each number shows its Name ("What this number is called inside Quanty. Only you see it."), the Phone number, the date it was Added and its Status:
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Active | "Sends and receives." |
| Paused | "Nothing is sent and nothing is received until you resume it." |
| Error | Something is wrong; the number shows why. |
Its buttons are Send a test, Edit, Pause or Resume, and Remove: "Quanty stops sending and receiving through it. Nothing changes in AWS or at Meta, and the messages already received stay where they are." "Automations that use this number stop doing anything." Edit also sets the AI Secretary that answers on this number: "Let a secretary answer messages to this number. Optional."
Send a test
Send a test "Sends one message from this number, so you can see it arrive on a phone."
| Field | What it means | Example |
|---|---|---|
| To | "In international format, with the country code. Use a number you can read yourself." | +48 600 100 200 |
| Message | Plain text, up to 4 096 characters. | Hello from Quanty. |
"Free text only reaches someone who wrote to this number in the last 24 hours. Outside that, WhatsApp accepts only an approved template." So write to the number from your phone first, then send the test.
Message templates
"WhatsApp only lets you write first with a template Meta has approved. Quanty makes them from your automations; they are listed here with their review status."
- Click New template.
- Pick the WhatsApp number and the Language (Polish, English or German), and give it a Name (optional).
- Write the Message, with the changing parts in double braces:
Hello {{Name}}, your order {{Number}} is on its way.(up to 1 024 characters). - Preview shows What Meta will see, or "Meta would refuse this message:" with the reasons.
- Click Submit for review. "You can use it once Meta approves it."
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Not sent yet | Saved, not submitted. |
| Pending Meta review | "Meta is reviewing it. This takes minutes to a couple of days." |
| Approved | Automations can send it. |
| Rejected | "Meta did not approve it", with the reason. |
| Paused by Meta, Disabled by Meta | Meta stopped it; automations cannot send it. |
Templates are made in the utility category (messages about an order, a delivery, an appointment), and Quanty checks their status every couple of minutes; Check the status now checks at once. A template made outside Quanty shows Created outside Quanty with Use this template. Deleting a template an automation still uses stops that automation's WhatsApp messages until you pick another one.
When a message arrives
An automation with the trigger WhatsApp message received runs for each new message on the number you choose, filtered by From this number, The text contains and The message has an attachment. Create a row for the message writes one row per message, with Sender's number, Sender's name, Text, Received at and Attachments in the columns you choose; attachments are saved as files. Only messages that arrive after the automation is switched on run it. See Triggers and conditions.
The sender's name comes from the customer's own WhatsApp profile: treat it as a label, not as identification.
Send a WhatsApp message
The automation step Send a WhatsApp message sends from one of your numbers to These numbers, Numbers from these columns or Reply to whoever wrote. Under What to send:
| Choice | What goes out |
|---|---|
| Write the message (the default) | Your text. Quanty turns it into a template and submits it to Meta when you save; it is sent once Meta approves it. |
| Free text | Your text as it is, only to people inside the 24-hour window. |
| An approved template | One of your approved templates, with its fields filled from the record. |
The messages can quote the record's columns and, in an automation started by a message, the message itself (Sender's number, Sender's name, Message text, Received at, Attachment names, Receiving number). See Actions.
The 24-hour rule
This is WhatsApp's rule, not Quanty's. A customer who writes to your number opens a 24-hour window, counted from their last message. Inside it you may answer in free text as often as the conversation needs. Outside it, WhatsApp accepts only a template Meta approved in advance.
Quanty checks the window for each recipient before it sends:
- inside the window, with a text set: the free text goes out;
- outside it: the approved template goes out;
- a template still waiting for Meta, or rejected: that recipient is skipped;
- no template at all: the recipient is skipped, and the run says the window was closed.
When Quanty does not know when someone last wrote (a number from a column that never wrote to you), it treats the window as closed. So anything you start yourself, a status update the next day, a scheduled reminder, a message to numbers in a column, needs a template; anything that answers within the day can be free text.
The AI Secretary on WhatsApp
A number can point at an AI Secretary you already run, and the secretary then answers messages in writing with the same persona, knowledge, rules and fields as on the phone. When the conversation ends it writes one row into the same table a call writes into, and the automations on that table run once, as for any new row.
- The first reply tells the customer they are writing to an AI assistant; this notice cannot be switched off.
- A conversation has at most 20 turns, and closes after 30 minutes without a message; a sender gets at most 30 turns an hour.
- When the secretary hands a conversation over to a person, it stays silent to that sender for 60 minutes.
- Its AI work is charged as AI usage, and each reply as a WhatsApp message.
What it costs
Every message Quanty sends for you is charged to your organization's credits: what WhatsApp and AWS charge for carrying it, plus 30 %, once for each message actually sent. Messages you receive cost nothing.
| Message to a Polish number | About |
|---|---|
| Free text inside the 24-hour window | 7 credits |
| A template (inside or outside the window) | 29 credits |
A template costs more because Meta adds its own fee, which depends on the recipient's country. The automation step shows the price ("Each message to a Polish number uses about 29 credits."). At most 200 messages an hour per organization go out from automations. When the organization has no credits, a step that would send is skipped and its run says why. The charges show on the Usage page as WhatsApp messages (see Credits and usage).
Where the data goes
A WhatsApp message passes through Meta, which runs WhatsApp, and through AWS End User Messaging Social in Frankfurt (eu-central-1), which is how Quanty sends and receives. What Quanty keeps (the message, the row and any attachment) is stored with the rest of your organization's data in AWS Frankfurt. Message texts and full phone numbers are not written to Quanty's logs; the conversation itself is stored, because that is the feature. The companies that process data for Quanty are listed at quanty.ai/subprocessors.
Related pages
- Triggers and conditions: the WhatsApp trigger.
- Actions: the send step.
- AI Secretary: the persona and the fields a conversation fills.
- Pallet receipts from drivers: drivers' receipts by WhatsApp.
- Security: where your data is processed.