Connect Instagram: what you need and current availability

Once the channel is active, you will connect a professional Instagram account to one of your agents and the agent will answer its direct messages. Here is what you see today, what you will need and how connecting will work, so that you have everything ready.

What you see in Channels today

It depends on your plan:

• If your plan includes Instagram, you see what the notice above describes. The Connect Instagram button does not appear.
• If your plan does not include Instagram, the card shows “Not in your plan” and the notice “Your plan does not include Instagram”, with the View plans button. Changing plan gains you nothing for now: the channel is still not enabled on the platform.

What you will need

• A professional Instagram account, either business or creator. A personal account will not work. If yours is personal, switch it to professional in the Instagram app’s settings before connecting.
• A plan that includes Instagram. This depends on your plan: you can see it under Billing (opens the app), and plans and credits explains it.
• The right role. Only an Admin or an Owner can connect channels. With any other role, the card says “Only account administrators can connect or disconnect channels.”
• An agent with no Instagram account. Each account connects to a single agent and each agent takes a single account. To serve two Instagram accounts you need two agents.
• An active agent. An agent that is a Draft or is Paused does not reply, even with the account connected.

How connecting will work

These are the steps as they are built into the app. They will apply once the channel is enabled: today the button in the first step does not appear. As they have not yet been tried with real Instagram accounts, a detail or two may change before the channel is switched on.

1. Go to Channels and, on the Instagram card, press Connect Instagram.

2. Under Agent, choose the agent that will answer the account’s direct messages.

3. Press Continue on Instagram. The app takes you to Instagram’s own page.

4. Sign in with the professional account you want to connect and authorise the access. Accept the permission to read and answer messages: without it the account cannot be connected.

5. Instagram sends you back to Channels. You see “Instagram connected”, with the text “Your agent now answers the account’s direct messages.”, and the account is listed on the card with the status Connected.

You have 15 minutes to finish from the moment you press Continue on Instagram. If you take longer, you have to start again.

To check that it works, send a direct message to that account from another Instagram account. The reply arrives within seconds and the conversation shows up under Conversations.

What your agent will do on Instagram

• It answers the account’s direct messages, with the same knowledge it uses on your website. It only replies to people who write to it: it does not start conversations or answer comments on your posts.
• It reads text only. If the customer sends a photo, a voice message or a video, they get a fixed notice that uses no credits. It goes out in Spanish, Catalan or English, depending on the agent’s Default language; in English it reads “I can only read text messages for now. Could you type what you need?”
• It uses credits as on the other channels. Each reply from the agent costs the same as in your website chat.
• Conversations land in the inbox. They appear under Conversations, next to the ones from your website, and your team can take over any of them.
• Contacts arrive without a name. Instagram does not give it to iAgentify, so each person shows as “Instagram” followed by a short reference, for example “Instagram 1784”, until they leave their contact details and become a lead.

The authorisation renews itself

The authorisation you give on Instagram has an expiry date. iAgentify renews it on its own before it runs out, with nothing for you to do. As the date gets close, the account’s card says so with “The authorisation renews itself; the current one expires on…” and the day.

If the connection stops working

The Instagram card changes to “Needs attention”, the account shows the status Error with the notice “This connection has stopped working”, and owners and admins receive the Problem with a channel notification. The app gives the usual reason: “The Instagram authorisation expires if it is not renewed or if you change the password.” The fix is to authorise it again:

1. Under Channels, press Disconnect on that account and confirm. Conversations already stored are kept.

2. Press Connect Instagram and repeat the connection with the same agent.

If the channel is not accepting new connections at that moment, the notice says “Do not disconnect it yet: you will be able to reconnect it from here once the channel is available.” Follow it: once disconnected, you could not connect it again until then.

The account’s Check button tests the connection there and then and tells you whether it works.

Error messages when connecting, and what to do

If the connection does not finish properly, when you are back in Channels you see “Instagram was not connected” with one of these messages.