Objective

Creating WhatsApp templates to use with Vonage Messages and Dispatch APIs.

Applies To

• WhatsApp
• Messages API
• Dispatch API
• Templates

Procedure

As we've laid out in our Understanding WhatsApp Messaging documentation page, after contacting your sales representative and registering to use WhatsApp with Vonage, you will need to create WhatsApp Message Templates (MTMs) to send to your end users.

1. Log in to your Facebook Business Manager account.
2. Select the dropdown menu at the top of the page and select WhatsApp Manager. This will take you to a page where you can manage your company's WhatsApp Business account. If you have registered with us, but don't have access to any of these menu options, contact your account manager or submit a Support request.
   
3. From here, select the Message Templates tab.
4. Select Create Message Template. This should open a template creation popup on your screen. WhatsApp has more information on what is required to generate a template.
   
5. After your template has been approved by WhatsApp (usually within 24 to 48 hours), you can use this template with the Messages and Dispatch APIs.
6. Before you use your template it might be helpful to review our developer documentation for an example of using Curl. The important pieces of information you would need to create your request are:
   • Your Message Template Namespace, which you can access by selecting Namespace on the Message Template tab on the WhatsApp Manager page.
   • Your WhatsApp phone number, which you can find on the Phone Numbers tab on the WhatsApp Manager page.
7. You simply need to use your WhatsApp phone number as the "from" in your request, and add your Namespace to your registered template name. Format it in the following way: "WhatsApp_namespace:template_name" to make up the "Name" in the template section of your request (for example, if your namespace is "1b46rg10_6e8uf_2d11_06ac_68hf938d313" and your template name is "hello_1", then your "Name" is "1b46rg10_6e8uf_2d11_06ac_68hf938d313:hello_1").
8. All you have to do now is make sure your template parameters are correct and you should be ready to send.