Hi,
Try this when you want your client to use Whatsapp for the communications.
Objective: “Button” for WhatsApp in the contact table.
Behavior => Action ( Create a New Action)
See the picture attached.
Select the table with the telephone number (must include international code without the plus)
Do this => External:go to a website
Launch External => Select “ON”
WhatsApp resource: https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/chats/how-to-use-click-to-chat/
Happy Creating Apps,
Kent Wu
Thanks for the tip @Kent_Wu. Will definitively investigate.
Thank you @Kent_Wu.
Here are some additional information:
In my experience, using
CONCATENATE("whatsapp://send?phone=",[Phone Number])
is even better.
Because using https://wa.me/ will open an extra tab in the browser, checking if WhatsApp is installed (on Windows and some Android phones).
Using whatsapp:// will directly open WhatsApp.
As described in the above article.
This expression can be used to bring the Phone Number in the right format.
49 is the prefix here in Germany.
SUBSTITUTE("49"&
NUMBER(
SUBSTITUTE(
SUBSTITUTE(
SUBSTITUTE(
SUBSTITUTE(
SUBSTITUTE([Mobile],
" ",""),
"-",""),
"/",""),
"(",""),
")","")
),
"4949","49")
Fabian:
CONCATENATE("whatsapp://send?phone=",[Phone Number])
Better:
CONCATENATE("whatsapp://send?phone=",ENCODEURL([Phone Number]))
See also:
Maybe try EXTRACTNUMBERS()?
SUBSTITUTE(EXTRACTNUMBERS([Mobile]), " , ", "")
See also:
Without knowing details, it’s possible that the ExtractNumbers() won’t work if either the area code or phone number itself contains leading zero.
Hi @Steve thank you for the hint with ENCODEURL([Phone Number]). But since the format has to be straight forward, ENCODEURL() is not necessary, it could even cause problems.
This is the format you have to use. Otherwise it will not work. The number has to be without any spaces, brackets, dashes, plus signs, and leading zeros.
https://wa.me/12345678910
EXTRACTNUMBERS() will not work when you have dashes in your phone number like 1234/5678910. Because in this case EXTRACTNUMERBS will divide 1234 with 5678910.
It will also not work with spaces, because it would extract more than one number.
Maybe a mix with SUBSTITUTE() and EXTRACTNUMBERS()
Fabian:
Maybe a mix with SUBSTITUTE() and EXTRACTNUMBERS()
Like this?
Steve:
auto> SUBSTITUTE(EXTRACTNUMBERS([Mobile]), " , ", "")> >
Shame on me
Thanks for this post.
What about if we want to add pre-filled text from our tables to the message?
Is this the only way?
Can we do that with this ?
SUBSTITUTE(EXTRACTNUMBERS([Mobile]), " , ", “”)
Hi @Nicolas_Feldman Yes that’s possible.
If you have a column with the Pre-Filled-Text, you can use this in your expression. Don’t forget to use ENCODEURL()
CONCATENATE(
"whatsapp://send?phone=",
SUBSTITUTE(EXTRACTNUMBERS([Mobile]), " , ", “”),
"&text=",
ENCODEURL([Pre-Filled-Text])
)
Hello everyone!
This link to WhatsApp is a really useful tool, even more with the pre-filled-text, I understand until know that sending messages to a specific phone number is possible(or at least letting it ready to just confirm sending it), but… What about doing the same but to pre-fill the message to be sent to a WhatsApp Group?
Looking trough it I found that WhatApps groups have kind of a UniqueID, I pressume that cause when you want to share a Link for somebody to join a group appears something like this:
“https://chat.whatsapp.com/KbJfrbqnSZi2xzbXXXXXX”
I presume the uniqueid or the group ID is the part after the .com/
I am planning to use this feature to send some info already loaded to the APP to a group of people in WhatsApp, the workaround for know would be to pre-fill the message with the trick you showed and sending it to a single person, then taking that message and send it to the group, but I ask in order to see if any of you know a better way to do the same (Open WhatsApp and Pre-Fill a message) but for it to be sent to a group.
I already try:
CONCATENATE(“whatsapp://send?phone=KbJfrbqnSZi2XXXXXXXXXX”,“&text=”,ENCODEURL([VENTA ID]))
Being “KbJfrbqnSZi2XXXXXXXXXX” what I assume is the group ID placed where phone number should be, the action button opens WhatsApp, but shows an error message:
“Couldn’t look up phone number KbJfrbqnSZi2XXXXXXXXXX because it’s too short.”
Thanks in advance for any help you may share!
Hi @JA003 that’s a good question. I did some testing, but it seems not to be possible.
The WhatsApp Business API once had this feature, but it was deprecated on July 2020, maybe for security reasons.
But there is a workaround:
CONCATENATE(
"whatsapp://send?text=",
ENCODEURL([Pre-Filled-Text])
)
This will open WhatsApp and you only have to choose the Group to send to.
This is the main reason I ended up using google chat groups, to auto send messages to groups via workflows. Also, no “press send” to was necessary
Fabian!
Thanks a lot! That workaround worked just perfect for my use case!
Best regards.
Could you please give more details ?
Integration with Google Chat - How? Actually it was ultra easy Tips & Tricks ?
Appsheet should naturally get tied with G Suite services and product as the time goes by, which is basically “No Doubt”. I believe you app creators would agree with it. Google Chat should be one of the service G Suite users are broadly adopting to their day to day jobs on the enterprise basis. It should be common needs “How to integrate Appsheet app with Google Chat”? Bunch of people should have been implemented this integration, but I tried it out with my app, and found it was super simple …
This is what I use today
There seem to be some methods to automatically send WhatsApp messages.
Maybe someone has the time or the knowledge to test it
Twilio
Remember: AppSheet already has a Twilio integration.
Zapier & Picky Assist
IFTTT & CallMeBot
Waboxapp & Wyzebulb
Waboxapp API
This could be used with an AppSheet Webhook.