Integration of Telegram bots with CRM Bitrix24 and custom chatbots from Avivi

Telegram is rapidly gaining popularity all over the world and as of the end of 2022 announced the achievement of 700 million users. One of the important reasons for its popularity and advantages over other messengers is the large number of bots that work in the application and actually make life easier. Some users install Telegram on their smartphone just for this and frankly ignore the rest of the useful and convenient features of the service. It's a pity, but that's not the point now — Telegram can really offer all its users high-quality chatbots:

• It is an easy way for users to interact with the business (buy, sell, get support, etc.);

• For businesses, this is an opportunity to automate and scale their business;

• For developers, this is an opportunity to implement almost any possible functionality thanks to the wide list of Telegram Bot APIs;

• Separately, Bitrix24 owners can enjoy all these benefits at the same time.

That is why the popularity of Telegram bots is growing every day. We at Avivi can assure you that almost a third of requests from clients in the first half of 2023 were related to Telegram and bot development in particular. In 2022, such appeals were only 5%-7% of the total number. In previous articles, we have already talked about implemented successful projects with bots, for example in the articles " Development of a Telegram bot that duplicates the tools of the personal account of customers on the website " or " The online store in Telegram from Avivi is a new level of your sales ". Therefore, now we will tell you about the great news from Bitrix24.

CRM integration with the Telegram chatbot

Recently, Bitrix24 has an option that many have been waiting for years. Now connecting your own Telegram chatbot to CRM takes just a few clicks. The chatbot connects to Opened Chanel Bitrix24, so you will receive every new request from Telegram users directly in the chat of your Bitrix24. In addition, the correspondence immediately goes to the Lead card in CRM and is stored in the message history. Convenient, isn't it?

In order to connect the bot to Bitrix24, you should perform only a few simple actions. The main thing is to get your bot token from Telegram: this is a unique code that identifies your bot to other platforms. To get it, you should take several steps:

• Open Telegram and find the master bot that controls all the others. His name is BotFather;

• Start the dialog with the /start command;

• Type or select the command /mybots from the list. A list of your bots will appear (or only one if there are no others);

• Enter the /token command — BotFather will tell you the code you need to copy for Bitrix24.

Image from the Bitrix24 official website

Now go to CRM, look for the menu item Add-ons and choose Contact center. A slider window will open for you, where you need to select Telegram. Press the green "Connect" button and in the "Access token" field, paste the previously copied code. Save changes — that's it, your Telegram bot is connected!

Development of bots for Telegram

But what if you don't have a Telegram bot yet? Well, creating it is not a problem at all and BotFather will help you with that too. But developing your own bot without programming skills is difficult. And if you need a complex bot with many features, sale of goods or services and interaction with third-party services, such as a payment system, custom development is indispensable.

The Avivi company offers its clients effective bots for Telegram, developed in Python. It is a multifunctional backend that uses all the capabilities of the Telegram interface to interact with users and has its own admin panel for your company's employees. Such a solution is completely different from numerous services that offer to assemble a bot in a constructor or use it on a lease basis. The bot we develop will always be owned by you and on your server.

The Python solution also has a number of advantages:

1. A powerful programming language allows you to realize any wishes of the client;

2. The solution does not require high capacities of your hardware and maintains stable operation;

3. The backend can be easily scaled according to the needs of expanding business;

4. Integration with any third-party services that have an API is possible;

5. Python is suitable for interfacing with blockchain, which is becoming increasingly important in today's world.

How does Avivi build your Telegram bot?

Bot development is a bit different from other types of development, say websites or other software. One of the big advantages is that you will see all the capabilities of your bot even before the first line of its code is written. How is that possible? It's very simple: since Telegram is used as the client interface, all its capabilities are already known in advance. This allows the designer to draw an interactive presentation that reflects the functionality of the future bot and takes into account all possible details. Therefore, already at the design stage, both developers and customers know what the future functionality will look like and what needs to be done so that expectations coincide with the result.

An example of a part of the interactive presentation of a separate functional block of the Telegram bot from Avivi

So the first thing we do in Avivi after receiving the technical task for creating a bot is to draw a mockup identical to the original. After agreement with the client, the programming stage begins. Already from the first days, the bot can appear in Telegram and gradually be supplemented with new features. So the customer doesn't have to wait to see the intermediate result, like when building a website. Just take your smartphone, open Telegram and test your bot. Any comments or corrections can be made immediately, so that you don't have to redo large amounts of code later.

So, as you can see, connecting Telegram bots to Bitrix24 is not difficult at all. And creating your own bot with the help of Avivi professionals is transparent and interactive. Therefore, if you want to use all the advantages of the powerful connection of Telegram + CRM, our developers will do everything necessary for the prosperity of your business!