Announcing API support for WhatsApp Flows

We’re thrilled to announce that WhatsApp Flows are officially supported by the Sunshine Conversations API. With Flows, you can create bespoke conversational experiences that are native to WhatsApp, whether its for triaging tickets, collecting new leads, or providing tailored product recommendations -- you can do it all with Flows.

What are WhatsApp Flows?

WhatsApp Flows are a type of WhatsApp Message Template that are highly interactive. They enable your business to send rich, multi-step, templated messages for collecting data.

What do I need to do?

Because support for Flows is being released as an API-first feature, you'll need access to the Sunshine Conversations API and have your own webhook URL configured to receive the events containing the Flow response. Access to the Messaging platform is available to customers on the Suite Professional or Enterprise plans.

What are the pricing implications?

The use of Flows as described below will count toward your MAUs and may also count towards your Notification API usage, depending on how the Flows are sent. Both of these platform usage fees are billed through Zendesk. Additionally, WhatsApp Message Template fees apply for the use of Flows. For most customers, Zendesk will pass-through the charges to our customers on behalf of WhatsApp.

How does it work?

Create your desired Flow through your WhatsApp Business Account under the Message template section.

Once your new Flow is approved by Meta, you can send it programmatically to your customers via our Notification API or Sending Flows Using Override option, depending on if the customer already has an open conversation with the business or not.

Once your customer completes the Flow, their responses are sent back to you through Sunshine Conversations via a passthrough:messaging webhook event. You can then use this webhook to automate the next steps in the conversation based on their answers.

Please make sure that you update your webhooks to start listening for this new event.

The response_json section of the event is where you'll find your customer's replies to the questions in your Flow.

What's next

We'll be working on making Flows available out-of-the-box for customers who would like to use them with their AI agents (Advanced or Essential). Additionally, we plan to add support for agents to be able to manually trigger and receive Flow responses directly in the conversation view.

If you have feedback or questions related to this announcement, visit our community forum where we collect and manage customer product feedback. For general assistance with your Zendesk products, contact Zendesk Customer Support.