Whatsapp somebody without saving number using Telegram bot

Being an avid user of Whatsapp, there are many great things I can say about the app. If there’s one thing that I can improve about it — it’ll be having the option to converse with somebody without adding them to my Contacts.

Here’s a Telegram bot that I’ve created for this purpose.

Apologies in advanced if your number is the test number that I’m using here

It’s super easy to use.

Step 1: Start a convo with @send_a_whatsapp_message_for_me_bot

Step 2: Type in the Phone Number that you want to start a conversation with

Step 3: Click the link provided and start Whatsapp-ing

And that’s it!

Read on if you’re interested in how I did it…

A quick google search shows that there’s a way to send Whatsapp message by entering this link http://api.whatsapp.com/send?phone=xxxxxxxxxx

A quick Google search result

So what I did was to use a Telegram bot to send myself a Whatsapp conversation link every time I type a number into it. Behind the scenes, it’s powered by Workato to pick up the new message and return a link to the Telegram bot chat.

First, we must use Telegram Botfather. You can read up more on Telegram bots here.

Follow the instructions on Botfather.

1. Type in the /newbot command to create a new bot
2. Choose a name for your bot
3. Choose a username for your bot

Your bot should be created with a HTTP API token.

Your token should look similar to this

Next, it’s the Workato part.

First, I configure a webhook for Telegram to send an event notification to Workato each time somebody types something into the bot. This is done with the setwebhook endpoint in Telegram API.

An one-off configuration of webhook to Telegram

HTTP GET request to configure the webhook

Next, I create a simple recipe to put in my logic. It’s all drag and drop.

And with that, I’m done!

Thanks for reading if you made it this far.