Telegram: bot
Your shop and customer chat in Telegram: customers order right in the chat with the bot, and you get alerts and their questions.
The bot opens your shop right inside Telegram. Once you turn on “Open the shop in Telegram” in the bot settings, a “Shop” button appears to the left of the message field in the chat with the bot: the customer browses the catalogue, searches, adds products to the cart and places an order without leaving the messenger. You and your staff get order alerts from the bot, and customer questions land in “Conversations” in the admin panel, and you can answer them there or straight from Telegram.
Your shop in Telegram
- The shop has a home page, catalogue, search, product page, favourites, cart and checkout. There is no account area and no sign-in: a customer inside Telegram does not need them.
- Customers do not need to sign in. The shop recognises them by their Telegram account, fills in their name at checkout and links the order to their customer card.
- Payment works with the same methods as on your website.
- The shop in Telegram has its own design made for a phone screen. You pick it for a storefront in the “Appearance in Telegram” field and set it up in “Design”, just like your website theme.
- You can add a “My orders” button to the bot menu: it shows the customer their latest orders and their statuses.
Talking to customers
- Everything a customer sends to the bot arrives in “Conversations”: text, photos, files, voice messages, location and contacts. A file over 20 MB or of an unsafe type is not added to the conversation, and staff see the reason.
- Your reply from the panel goes to the customer in Telegram, files included.
- You can mark who answers customers. Those staff members receive questions from the website chat and from the bot right in Telegram, and their reply to a forwarded message goes to the customer without opening the panel.
Notifications
- The bot sends you and your staff messages about shop events: order placed, order paid, status changed, new customer registered. You write the text yourself, with the order number, total, status, customer name and shop name available.
- A customer can link their own Telegram with one button on the order confirmation page or in their website account. From then on their order updates arrive in Telegram.
- The customer can unsubscribe at any time with a command to the bot. If they block the bot, the shop notices and stops writing.
- Messages are free: unlike SMS, you do not pay per message.
- You can run several bots: each storefront gets its own connection, one of them the main.
Signing in to the website
- A customer can sign in to the website with Telegram, with no password and no e-mail confirmation.
What you need
- A bot created in Telegram via BotFather, and its token.
- A shop reachable from the internet over https: otherwise Telegram cannot pass customer messages to the bot or open the shop.
- Step-by-step guide: https://cartixx.com/docs/customers/telegram
What appears in the shop
This is what a shopper sees once it is installed.
- On the order confirmation page a signed-in customer is offered a “Get updates in Telegram” button. The block’s look is edited in the design editor. You can remove the offer from this page in the bot settings.
- In the customer account — the same Telegram linking button. Shown only to customers who have not linked Telegram yet. Can be turned off in the bot settings.
What we fixed
The add-on’s hints, description and guide now name panel sections the same way the menu does. Some paths used to point to places like Settings → Add-ons, which are gone since CartiX 2.131.0.
Fixed
The list of accounts connected to the bot now shows when each one connected and last wrote in shop time. Before, these times ran several hours behind.
What we fixed
The Telegram shop could open someone else’s account for a customer. This happened when a person placed a guest order on someone else’s number and then linked their Telegram to that order: from then on the Telegram shop recognised them as the owner of the number. Now the Telegram shop signs in to an account only if Telegram was linked from that account itself. Old guest links keep sending order updates but no longer open the account. To sign in from Telegram, the customer links it again from their account.
What’s new
You now choose the language of the bot and the Telegram shop in the bot settings, in the “Language of the bot and the Telegram shop” block. By default the bot uses one language for everyone — Ukrainian, and you can pick another one from your storefront’s languages. In the chosen language the bot answers customers, labels its commands and the shop button, sends mailings and opens your shop in Telegram. If you want the bot to answer in the language set in the customer’s Telegram, choose “As in the customer’s Telegram”.
Before, the bot and the Telegram shop picked the language each on its own: a customer could get the bot’s answer in one language while the shop opened in another. Details: https://cartixx.com/docs/customers/telegram
Fixed
Bot menu buttons work even if the customer still has the keyboard in the previous language: the bot answers and sends the menu in the new one. The order status in “My orders” is shown in the conversation language.
After the update
A bot that used to answer in the customer’s Telegram language now speaks Ukrainian. To keep the old behaviour, open the bot settings and choose “As in the customer’s Telegram”. Also check the menu button captions in the chosen language.
What’s new
Customers can now open your shop right in the chat with your bot and place an order without leaving Telegram. Turn on “Open the shop in Telegram” in the bot settings, and a “Shop” button appears to the left of the customer’s message field. You can change its label. Customers do not need to sign in: the shop recognises them by their Telegram account, fills in their name at checkout and links the order to their customer card. Product buttons in broadcasts also open the shop right in Telegram. Step-by-step setup guide: https://cartixx.com/docs/customers/telegram
The bot now connects by itself as soon as you save the connection with its token, so you no longer have to press “Connect the bot” separately.
To get order messages from the bot yourself, send it the /id command. The bot replies with your chat number, which goes into the “Telegram” field under “Where to write to you” in the notification settings. Before, the hint for this field promised that the bot would give you the number, but there was nowhere to get it.
What we fixed
The bot greeting and the “Offer the bot at checkout” and “Offer the bot in the customer account” switches were not saved, even though the screen said “Saved”. Now they are saved.
A location, a contact or a file the shop could not accept used to vanish from “Conversations” entirely. Now staff see what the customer sent, and a file that was not accepted comes with the reason: it is over 20 MB, the shop does not accept such files, or it simply could not be received. The shop reports a lost file even when it came with a caption.
A conversation with a customer whose Telegram is not yet linked to a customer card is labelled with their Telegram name instead of a faceless “Customer message”.
A reply with a file and a long text now gets through: the long text goes as a separate message before the file. If only part of a reply reached the customer, staff see which file still needs to be sent. When Telegram delivers the same message again, the operator’s reply no longer goes to the customer twice.
The “Reply” button under a forwarded question stayed with every operator, so two of them could answer the same customer. Now, once one operator answers, the button for the others changes to “Answered by …”.
If Telegram refused the “Shop” button, the advice “save again” did nothing: the button was only set when you changed the switch or the label. Now saving again sets it anew.
A customer who stopped the bot with /stop and later sent /start again got order updates back but not broadcasts, although the bot promised to resume messages. Now both come back. If a customer blocked and unblocked the bot after /stop, the shop still does not write to them: only their own /start brings messages back.
The “Share a phone number” bot menu action never asked for a number and only invited the customer to write in the chat. It is now called “Message the shop”.
What to do after updating
This add-on needs shop version 2.104.0: update the shop first, then the add-on. After updating, open the bot settings and check the greeting and both “Offer the bot…” switches: if you changed them before, set them again and save.
What’s fixed
The bot no longer offers to pay for an order if its money is already held on the customer’s card with two-step payment. Previously the customer could pay a second time. Two-step payment needs CartiX 2.92.0.
The bot no longer offers to pay an order that is paid on delivery. The customer opened such a link and read "this order is paid on delivery" — there was nothing to pay there. Where payment is actually possible the link stays.
The add-on works with shop version 2.47.0 and newer.
What we fixed
The add-on's screen now looks like the rest of the panel: its buttons, sizes and colours are taken from the panel's own set instead of being written into the add-on separately. It used to live a life of its own — the panel changed its look, and the add-on's screen stayed as it was and looked out of place.
The bot settings are back in the panel
The bot is configured again: connecting and checking the link, the greeting that starts a conversation, and the bot menu buttons with their captions and actions. You see the list of subscribers and can appoint who among them answers customers.
The plugin speaks the language of your panel
The service name and the hints for its fields now live in the plugin itself and are translated into Russian, Ukrainian and English. They used to sit in the engine, where a disabled plugin still took up space and translations had to wait for a shop update.
An icon of its own
In the «Plugins» section and in the list of installed items the add-on now shows its own icon instead of an identical box, so you find the one you need at a glance. The icon appears on shops running version 1.30.0 and newer.
A list of bot users
Subscribers moved to their own tab with search and filters; that is also where you choose who answers shoppers.
You can see who you are talking to
The question comes with a card about the person, and a plain message is enough to reply.
Answer website questions from Telegram
A message from the website chat reaches whoever answers in Telegram, and their reply goes back to the shopper.
Sign-in and chat no longer mix up
The sign-in button no longer looks like the start of a bot conversation.
Sign in with Telegram
A shopper signs in with one tap, without a password.
Poll results inside the shop
Shoppers' answers are collected and shown together with the broadcast.
Polls reach your shoppers
Answer options are sent correctly — previously a poll could fail to send at all.
Conversations belong to the person, not the order
The whole history with a shopper stays in one place even when they have several orders.
Telegram broadcasts
Formatted text, images, a product selection and a poll — to everyone who started the bot and did not opt out of news.
The bot is always found
The shop resolves the right bot even where no storefront is set in the settings.
Guests can link too
After checkout, even a shopper without an account can connect to the bot.
Voice, video and stickers are visible
Everything a shopper sends in Telegram shows up in the shop conversation instead of being lost.
Restore the original block design
The bot block on your storefront can be reset to its original look with one button.
Conversations with shoppers
Questions from Telegram land in the shop's «Conversations» and your reply goes back to the chat.
Shoppers link to your bot
A shopper starts the bot and receives your shop notifications in Telegram; their messages reach you.
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