Service Incident - January 20, 2026 - Sunshine Conversations | All Pods - WhatsApp attachments (including images and audio) are not being received

SUMMARY

On January 20, 2026, from 13:48 UTC to 16:29 UTC, customers using the WhatsApp integration via Sunshine Conversations experienced issues where attachments, such as images and audio, were not received. Due to this disruption, attachments sent during the incident were not delivered and must be resent by end-users.

Timeline

January 20, 2026 02:41 PM UTC | January 20, 2026 06:41 AM PT

We are aware of an issue where WhatsApp attachments (including images and audio) are not being received through Sunshine Conversations. Our engineering team is actively investigating the root cause and working to restore full functionality as quickly as possible. We appreciate your patience and understanding.

January 20, 2026 04:26 PM UTC | January 20, 2026 08:26 AM PT

Our engineers have released a fix for WhatsApp attachments (including images and audio) not being received through Sunshine Conversations. At this time normal functionality has been restored. Images and attachments that were missed will be retried over the next few hours. We appreciate your patience.

January 20, 2026 05:10 PM UTC | January 20, 2026 09:10 AM PT

We regret to inform you that attachments which were missed during the impact of this incident are unable to be recovered. At this time WhatsApp functionality is back to normal following our fix. Please ask customers to resend attachments if needed. Thank you for your understanding.

Root Cause Analysis

This incident was caused by an issue with a third-party service responsible for delivering WhatsApp media attachments. Due to this problem, the system was unable to retrieve certain media files. The cause was external and unrelated to any changes on our side. Additionally, an internal feature designed to avoid duplicate messages unintentionally prevented the recovery of some missed attachments.

Resolution

To fix this issue, we implemented a fix that used an alternative method to retrieve media files, bypassing the affected service. This restored the delivery of new attachments. Unfortunately, attempts to recover attachments that failed during the incident were unsuccessful. Customers have been informed that any missed attachments will need to be resent.

Remediation Items

Set up monitoring to specifically track the delivery of media files to quickly identify any future issues.

Review and improve the system that prevents duplicate messages to avoid accidentally blocking valid message retries.

Consider adding clear notifications for agents when media files cannot be retrieved, to help with awareness and troubleshooting.