WhatsApp Bot

What is the WhatsApp Bot?

The WhatsApp Bot turns your WhatsApp Business number into a self-service channel for your end customers. Your customers can:

• Sign up without downloading anything — the form appears inside WhatsApp.
• Create shipments from the chat: they fill in origin, destination, weight, description, and the shipment is created in Sistrack.
• Get a shipping quote without signing up, with the price instantly.
• Track their shipments by typing the tracking number.
• See their last 5 shipments with a button.

And you (the operator) can take control of any conversation at any time. The bot goes quiet for that conversation and you reply by hand. When you’re done, you hand the conversation back to the bot.

How does it relate to WhatsApp Notifications?

The bot does NOT replace automatic status-change notifications:

Both modes coexist on the same WhatsApp Business number: when the bot creates an order, that order still triggers the HSM notification like any other when it changes status. The customer sees everything in the same chat.

Prerequisites

• Have WhatsApp Business connected in Sistrack (Embedded Signup completed, see WhatsApp Notifications).
• A plan that includes WhatsApp (Professional, Business, or Enterprise).

No additional credits required: the messages the bot sends go through the same WhatsApp Business channel — Meta charges per conversation directly to the customer, same as notifications.

Initial setup

Step 1: Enable the bot

1. Go to Integrations > WhatsApp > Bot tab.
2. You’ll see four sections: Auto-responder (global toggle), URLs for Meta, RSA keys for Flow Endpoint, and Published Flows (Registration and Shipment Creation).

Step 2: Generate the RSA keys

WhatsApp Flows uses end-to-end encryption between Meta and Sistrack. We need one RSA key pair per tenant.

1. In the RSA keys for Flow Endpoint section, click Generate keypair.
2. Sistrack generates the pair and shows the public key on screen.
3. Copy that full public key.
4. Go to Meta Business Manager > your WABA > WhatsApp Manager > Account Tools > Flows.
5. Under Public key, paste the public key you copied and save.

The private key never leaves Sistrack and is stored encrypted in the database. If you regenerate it, you must re-publish the public key to Meta and re-publish the Flows.

Step 3: Publish the Flows

Flows are WhatsApp’s native forms (Registration and Create shipment). Sistrack creates them for you in your WABA.

1. In the Published Flows section, click Publish Flows now.
2. Sistrack creates the two Flows in your Meta account and stores their IDs.
3. Once published, you’ll see the publish date and the Flow IDs.

If Sistrack updates the Flows in the future (a new screen, new fields), simply click Publish Flows again — it’s idempotent, it won’t create duplicates.

Step 4: Turn on the bot

1. In the Auto-responder section, turn on the toggle.
2. Save your changes.

From that moment on, any incoming message to your WhatsApp Business number will be handled by the bot (except when an operator has taken control of that specific conversation).

How a customer interacts with the bot

New customer flow

1. The customer sends any message to your WhatsApp Business number (e.g., “hi”).
2. The bot replies with a Sign up button that opens a native form inside WhatsApp.
3. The customer fills in name, phone, email, and taps Send.
4. Sistrack automatically creates a Customer-type user + a Sender and links them to their WhatsApp contact.
5. The bot replies “Account created. Type MENU to get started.”

Shipment creation flow

1. The customer writes SHIP or taps the “Create shipment” button in the menu.
2. A Flow opens with a multi-screen form:
   • Destination department/region (dropdown)
   • City/municipality (dropdown populated once a department/region is chosen)
   • Full address
   • Recipient details (name, phone)
   • Package description and weight
3. The customer taps Confirm.
4. Sistrack:
   • Recalculates the rate (it doesn’t trust the customer’s price).
   • Creates the order with creation_method='whatsapp_bot'.
   • Replies with the tracking number and a summary.

Tracking flow

1. The customer writes TRACK or taps “Track”.
2. The bot asks for the tracking number.
3. The customer sends it.
4. The bot replies with the shipment’s current status (custom step), assigned courier, and destination.

Security: the bot only lets a customer track shipments belonging to their own sender profile. If given someone else’s number, it replies “I couldn’t find that shipment.”

Getting a quote without signing up

Anyone who writes to you — whether or not they have an account with your business — can ask for a shipping price before deciding to sign up. It’s the best way to show value before asking for their details.

How a new contact (without an account) uses it:

1. They write anything to your WhatsApp Business number.
2. The bot shows a welcome menu with three options: Get a quote, Create my account, and Support.
3. Tapping Get a quote (or typing the word QUOTE at any time) opens a native form where they choose the origin location, the destination, and the package’s approximate weight. The location fields automatically adapt to the country configured on your account (for example, Department/Municipality or State/City).
4. They instantly see the available service options with their price, sorted from cheapest to most expensive.
5. On the same results screen, the bot offers them the link to create their account in 2 minutes — using the same WhatsApp number so they stay automatically connected to that conversation.

How an already registered customer uses it:

They write QUOTE from the main menu (it doesn’t appear as a button because WhatsApp limits messages to 3 buttons, but the menu footer always reminds them of the command). The key difference: if you have special negotiated rates for that customer, the quote uses their rates, not the general rate — the price they see is exactly what they’d pay when actually creating the shipment.

A contact without an account always sees your business’s general rate, never other customers’ negotiated rates.

Best practices:

• No need to turn anything on — the quoting tool becomes available as soon as you publish the Flows (Step 3 of the initial setup).
• It’s a conversion tool: use your bot’s welcome message to invite your contacts to get a quote before asking them to sign up.
• There’s a daily quote limit per number to prevent abuse — a normal customer will never notice it.

Taking control of a conversation

Sometimes a customer needs human attention — the bot doesn’t understand, there’s an issue with a shipment, or they simply prefer to talk to you.

How to take control

1. Go to Integrations > WhatsApp > Inbox.
2. Open the customer’s conversation.
3. In the thread header you’ll see a 🤖 Auto badge and a Take control button.
4. Tap Take control. The badge changes to 👤 Manual (you).
5. From that moment on, the bot no longer responds in that conversation. Incoming messages keep arriving in your inbox, and you reply by hand using the inbox’s reply field.

How to hand the conversation back to the bot

When you’re done helping:

1. In the same thread header, tap Return to bot.
2. The badge goes back to 🤖 Auto.
3. The customer’s next message will be handled by the bot again.

Note: if you forget to hand the conversation back, the bot returns automatically after 2 hours. This prevents a customer from being “stuck” without an auto-reply because someone took control and forgot to close it out.

Best practices

• Only turn on the bot once the Flows are published. If you enable it without publishing, customers will get “Registration not enabled” when they try to sign up.
• Announce the bot to your customers. A customer who gets automatic replies with no context gets confused. Send an initial message to your customer base saying: “You can now create shipments by writing SHIP to me, or track with your number.”
• Check the inbox daily. Inbound messages the bot doesn’t understand (odd messages, audio, photos) land in the inbox. If you see many “not understood” messages from the same customer, take control.
• Use “Return to bot” before closing the thread. If you leave the conversation in Manual mode and the customer comes back tomorrow, the bot will be silenced.

What the bot does NOT do (yet)

• It doesn’t send broadcasts or promotions (HSM is still used for that).
• It doesn’t process payments over WhatsApp (the customer pays through another channel).
• It doesn’t replace a human operator: the idea is to resolve the trivial stuff (registration, tracking, creating standard shipments) and escalate anything complex to a human.

Troubleshooting

The customer taps “Sign up” and it says “Registration not enabled” → The Flows haven’t been published. Go to the bot page and tap Publish Flows now.

The customer writes QUOTE and the bot says the quoting tool isn’t available → Same as registration, the quoting tool needs the Flows published. Tap Publish Flows now and try again.

The customer opens the Flow and it’s blank / shows an error → The public key you have in Meta doesn’t match Sistrack’s private key. Regenerate the keys in Sistrack, copy the new public key to Meta, and re-publish the Flows.

A customer reports the bot isn’t responding → Someone probably took control and didn’t hand the conversation back. Go to the inbox, open the thread, and tap Return to bot.

I want to temporarily disable the bot → Go to the bot page and turn off the Auto-responder toggle. HSM notifications keep working. When you turn it back on, the bot picks up where it left off (nothing is lost).

See also

• WhatsApp Notifications — the module’s other mode, complementary to the bot.