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Get Started with WhatsApp

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

  • Describe the benefits of Enhanced Messaging for WhatsApp.
  • Connect your WhatsApp number to Salesforce.
  • Set up message routing with an Omni-Channel flow

What’s Up with WhatsApp?

Ursa Major Solar, Inc., is a fast-growing company that sells solar components and systems. Its CEO, Sita Nagappan-Alvarez, wants the company’s customer service to feel as innovative and efficient as its solar products. She’s just learned that a significant percentage of its customers use WhatsApp, a messaging app used by more than 2 billion people across 180 countries. 

Sita suspects that giving customers the option to request help from Ursa Major’s support team over WhatsApp will modernize the support experience, reduce calls to the call center, and attract potential customers browsing the solar market. She asks her trusty Salesforce admin, Maria Jimenez, to make it happen.

Maria, who uses WhatsApp daily to keep in touch with her family, jumps right in. She knows that Messaging in Service Cloud provides two types of WhatsApp experiences: standard (scheduled for retirement) and enhanced. She proposes creating an enhanced WhatsApp channel for Ursa Major, and outlines some of its advantages.

  • Agents can use multiple formats to help customers, such as voice messages, a variety of file types, and questions with clickable options.
  • If an agent can’t help a customer, they can transfer the customer to another agent, queue, or Omni-Channel routing flow, or mark a session inactive if the customer stops responding.
  • Agents can work efficiently with the help of read and delivery receipts, and can collaborate quietly with their supervisor during messaging sessions with the flag raise and supervisor whisper features.
  • Agents can initiate messaging sessions with customers, while admins can use flows to send automated notifications based on approved WhatsApp templates.
  • Admins have granular control over how customers request help or opt into or out of messaging.

5 circles showing an agent chatting, a chat with a bot, an agent raising a flag, an idle session, and opting in

Best of all, Maria can set up an enhanced WhatsApp channel for Ursa Major in just a few hours! Follow along as she adds WhatsApp to the company’s support channels.

Note

To create enhanced WhatsApp channels, you need Messaging. If you have a WhatsApp Business Account and a sandbox with Messaging, you can try out these steps there, ideally with a phone number that you designate for testing. If you don't have a sandbox and you're a customer or partner developer, contact your manager to request one. Here's more info about using Messaging in a sandbox.

Create an Enhanced WhatsApp Channel

To get started, Maria turns on Messaging and creates an enhanced WhatsApp channel in Setup. The channel connects Ursa Major’s WhatsApp number to Salesforce so their agents can participate in WhatsApp conversations from the Service Console. Here are the steps she takes.

Note

Each enhanced WhatsApp channel in Salesforce is linked to a WhatsApp Business account (WABA). When you set up your channel, we walk you through creating a WABA that's associated with your phone number. If you create your WABA in Meta Business Manager outside of the channel setup flow in Salesforce, you can't use it with a Salesforce channel.

  1. Click the gearSetup to open Setup, and go to the Messaging Settings page.
  2. Click the toggle to turn on Messaging.
  3. Click New Channel, and then click Start.
  4. Click WhatsApp, and then click Next.
  5. Review and accept the terms and conditions, and then click Next.
  6. Disable any popup blockers. Then, click Connect to WhatsApp.Channel flow screen titled “Let’s make a connection” with a Connect to WhatsApp button
  7. In the window that appears, enter your Facebook login credentials.
  8. Follow the prompts to create or select a Meta Business Account, WhatsApp Business Account, and WhatsApp Business Profile, and verify your phone number by text or voice call.
  9. When a message notifies you that you’re ready to chat, click Finish.
  10. Back on the Messaging Settings page, the channel setup flow shows that your WhatsApp account is connected. Click Next.
  11. Select your WhatsApp number and click Next.
  12. Enter a message to show when a customer first contacts you in WhatsApp. Maria enters, Thanks for your message! We’re connecting you to someone who can help. Then, click Next.
  13. Choose how to route incoming messages to agents. Maria plans to use an Omni-Channel flow to drive routing, so she selects Set up routing later.

The flow ends and the WhatsApp channel is created. Now it’s time to decide how incoming messages are routed to the support team.

Set Up Message Routing

Maria is already familiar with Omni-Channel, the Salesforce routing tool. She learns that messaging sessions can be routed in two ways: via a queue and routing configuration, or an Omni-Channel flow. Omni-Channel flows support more complex routing logic, such as routing to enhanced bots, and they come with a handy template. Maria opts to go with the flow. (We couldn’t help ourselves.) Here’s what she does.

  1. Enable Omni-Channel.
  2. While you’re on the Omni-Channel Settings page, select Enable Skills-Based and Direct-to-Agent Routing to let agents transfer messaging sessions.
  3. Create a service channel (not the same as a WhatsApp channel!) for all Messaging channels.
  4. Create a fallback queue to route customer messages if the flow isn’t available.
  5. Create presence statuses for agents who will help customers in Messaging channels. Maria creates three: Available—Messaging, On Break, and Busy.

After those setup tasks, Maria creates an Omni-Channel flow in Flow Builder to route WhatsApp messages. Here’s what that looks like.

  1. Click the gear Setup to open Setup, and go to the Flows page under Process Automation.
  2. Click New Flow.
  3. Select Use a Template, then click Next.
  4. Select Omni-Channel Flow in the left pane. To keep things simple, click the template named Messages Routed to Agents and Queues.New Flow screen showing Omni-Channel Flow templates with Messages Routed to Agents and Queues selected
  5. Click Create to open the template.
  6. Edit the template to reflect your routing preferences. Maria wants all VIP customers routed directly to Jessica, her most experienced agent. All other customers will be routed to a queue of Ursa Major’s agents. Here’s what she does.
    • Maria simplifies the template to use two routing decision outcomes: VIP Customer and Other Customers. The VIP Customer outcome checks the account name of the messaging user’s contact record. If it’s one of Ursa Major’s three biggest accounts, the customer is considered a VIP.
    • She adds a Check Availability for Routing element at the beginning of the first routing path. She chooses the option to route to an agent and selects Jessica. She also adds a variable to show the number of agents online. Then, Maria adds a decision element with Yes and No outcomes. If the customer is a VIP and Jessica is available, their session is routed to her. If Jessica is offline, the customer is routed to the queue.
    • She edits the remaining flow elements and replaces any placeholders with real values. For example, all service channel placeholders in the Route Work flow action are updated to list the Messaging service channel.

Check out Maria’s final flow.

Omni-Channel flow

Now that Maria has created her Omni-Channel routing flow, she’s ready to finalize her WhatsApp channel. In the next unit, learn how to connect an Omni-Channel flow to a Messaging channel, set channel keywords and auto-responses, and add Messaging to the Service Console.

Resources

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