Instagram Integration

Integrating Facebook Instagram with Chat Data empowers your custom chatbot to communicate directly with customers through your Instagram. This powerful combination not only automates responses but also allows you to seamlessly take over conversations whenever needed, providing a perfect balance of efficiency and personal touch.

By connecting Instagram to Chat Data, you'll create a versatile system that handles inquiries automatically while giving you the flexibility to engage with customers directly at any time.

This guide will walk you through the step-by-step process of linking your chatbot to your Business/Creator Instagram, ensuring smooth, effective, and personalized customer interactions.

Prerequisites

You will need the following:

• An Instagram Professional Account.
• A Facebook Page connected to that account.

Connect Instagram with Chat Data

1. Go to Dashboard > [Chatbot] > Integrations.
2. Select the Instagram integration card.
3. Click the Connect button in the pop-up window.
4. Sign in with your Facebook account and click continue.
5. Agree to connect your Instagram account with Chat Data. Then fill in your instagram's username and password after click the Get started button.
6. After entering your instagram's username and password and get signed in, you have to choose the Facebook Page you want to connect the Instagram account to.
7. Review the corresponding Facebook Page and the Instagram account you are connecting to Chat Data. Please make sure that the Allow access to messages option is checked. Click next to continue.
8. Click to the follow step that the modal ask you to choose your business account. If this is your first time to connect your Instagram account with the corresponding Facebook Page, you have to close the current pop-up window and repeat the steps above and redo the previous step starting from the Step 3 above again because currently the Instagram is added to your Facebook page only when the 2nd time you log in your Instagram.account.
9. Choose the Facebook Page that is connected to your Instagram account and click the Continue button.
10. Choose the added Instagram acccount from the list and click the Continue button. If you do not see the Instagram account in the list, it's likely that this is your first time to connect your Instagram account with the corresponding Facebook Page. You have to close the current pop-up window and repeat the steps above and redo the previous step starting from the Step 3 above again.
11. Click the Continue button for the final review of the permissions and then click the Save button to finish the integration.
12. You should see the following panel after the integration is complete.

With the integration now active, your chatbot is ready to respond to all messages received through Facebook Instagram.

For testing purposes, you can scan the QR code provided in step 12 using your smartphone camera to message your Instagram bot from another Instagram account(Please do not use the same Instagram account to send the message to itself as the chatbot will ignore self messages.). Additionally, you can access the INBOX link to navigate to your Facebook Business Suite Instagram inbox, allowing you to directly respond to customers as part of a human takeover.

Troubleshooting: The AI writes a reply but the customer never receives it

This is the most common Instagram integration problem, and it is caused by a setting on Meta's side rather than by anything in Chat Data.

You are affected if all of the following are true:

• The customer's Instagram message appears in your Chat Data chat logs.
• The AI generates a reply and you can read it in the chat logs or live chat panel.
• The customer never receives that reply on Instagram.
• Meta Business Suite still shows the conversation as unanswered, so you end up replying by hand.

When this happens, Meta rejects the delivery with this error:

(#100) The action is invalid since it's not the thread owner.

Why this happens

Instagram allows only one app at a time to reply to a given conversation. That app is called the thread owner, and Meta decides who it is through a feature called Conversation Routing.

If no default routing app has been chosen, Instagram hands every new conversation to your Meta Business Suite Inbox instead of to Chat Data. Chat Data still receives the incoming message and still writes a reply, but Meta blocks it from sending, because it does not own the conversation.

Chat Data cannot override this. The conversation owner has to be assigned to Chat Data in your Facebook Page settings.

Fix: set Chat Data as your default routing app

1. Open https://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=ig_conversation_routing.
2. Use the account switcher in the top-right corner to switch to the Facebook Page connected to your Instagram account. This setting belongs to the Page, not to your personal profile, so you will not see the right options until you have switched.
3. Look at the Default routing app section. If it shows a Set up button, no app has been assigned and this is the cause of your problem. Click Set up.

4. In the Select a default routing app dialog, open the App dropdown and choose Chat Data, then click Continue.

5. The Default routing app section should now show Chat Data instead of the Set up button.

If Chat Data does not appear in the dropdown, you are almost certainly on the wrong Page profile. Switch to the Page connected to your Instagram account and reload the settings page. If it is still missing, reconnect the Instagram integration by following the steps at the top of this guide.

Releasing conversations that are already stuck

Assigning the default routing app fixes every new conversation immediately, but conversations that the Inbox has already taken remain with the Inbox.

A conversation returns to Chat Data once the current owner releases it, or once the thread goes idle — meaning the customer has not sent a message for 24 hours. To hand a conversation back straight away, open it in Meta Business Suite Inbox and mark it as Done.

Verifying the fix

Send a direct message to your Instagram account from a different personal Instagram account, and do not open the conversation in Meta Business Suite. The AI reply should arrive within a few seconds.

If replies still do not arrive after setting the default routing app, check your Advanced Messaging permissions at https://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=advanced_messaging. Switch to the connected Page, find Chat Data under Connected Apps, click Edit, and confirm that Access standby channel is enabled under Instagram Permissions.

If the problem persists, contact us at [email protected] with your chatbot name and your Instagram handle. We can query Meta directly to see which app currently owns your conversations.

Delayed Message Sending

If you want the AI chatbot to delay sending messages to users, you can set a random delay time for the AI chatbot to postpone its responses to customers. You can configure this in the WhatsApp integration modal as shown below:

The AI chatbot will randomly delay its response within the range you set, making it harder to detect as an AI bot.

AI Re-engagement

Timely follow-ups are crucial for ensuring customer satisfaction. If you want the AI chatbot to follow up with customers after their last interaction, you can customize three key aspects of the AI follow-up:

1. The time window for follow-up after the last message
2. The specific conditions that trigger a follow-up
3. The style and content of the re-engagement message

When the specified time arrives, the AI evaluates whether the conversation meets your defined re-engagement criteria. If the conditions are met, it sends a contextually appropriate follow-up message based on the previous conversation.

Live Chat Handover

You can chat with the customer by clicking the INBOX link above or in the Chat logs Dashboard modal as shown below to chat with the customer.

You can scan the QR code above with your smartphone or use the Instagram Direct Message Link to chat with the customer.

If you have access to our live chat feature, you can also click the Live Chat dashboard tab and select the corresponding Instagram conversation thread to chat with the customer. Alternatively, you can use the checklist filter to filter the Instagram conversations only.

You should turn off the AI chatbot for the corresponding conversation so that the chatbot won't respond to the message when you are chatting with the customer. Otherwise, the AI chatbot will respond to the same query again even if you have typed your response in the admin live chat panel.

After you send the human response, we will send the Instagram message to the customer's Instagram account directly. When the customer responds back and if the AI bot is turned off and you are offline, we will send an email along with the chat portal link to your email address registered in the live chat setting, which is similar to how the offline live message works in New Message To the Agent.

You can switch the AI bot on at any time after you have finished the live chat with the customer.

Automatic AI chatbot pause

To improve user experience, you can configure an automatic pause duration for the AI chatbot during Instagram integration setup. During this pause (up to 1 week), customer messages bypass the AI and go directly to you with email notifications. The chatbot automatically resumes after the configured time period. Note that this feature only works with Chat Data's native live chat interface, not Facebook's Business Platform interface, since Facebook doesn't relay Business Platform messages to Chat Data, preventing us from detecting human agent takeovers.