Channels

The Channels view allows administrators to configure the messaging integrations through which the AI assistant communicates with users outside the application. Each channel represents a connection to an external messaging platform — WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, or Instagram — or to a website that shows the embedded chat, and links it to a specific AI assistant. The application can also add channel types of its own for other providers; they appear in this view next to the built-in ones, with their own name and icon.

Channels Grid

The grid lists all configured channels across all platform types. The following columns are displayed:

Id: Unique numeric identifier of the channel.
Type: The platform of the channel, shown with its logo: WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Web, or a type the application adds.
Name: The administrator-assigned name for this channel configuration.
Status: A badge indicating whether the channel is enabled, disabled, or failed. Failed means the channel could not deliver its last reply; the badge's tooltip explains that the channel is paused and that editing it will retry.
Assistant: The AI assistant assigned to handle conversations received through this channel.
Identifier: The platform-specific identifier, labelled per platform — Business phone for WhatsApp, Page id for Facebook, Account id for Instagram, and Site for Web.
Sessions: The number of conversation sessions that have been received through this channel.
Actions: A per-row actions menu.

Filters

The view provides the following filter fields:

Name: Filters channels whose name contains the entered text.
Type: A dropdown to filter by channel type (WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Web, and any type the application adds).
Assistant: A searchable dropdown to filter by the assistant assigned to the channel.
Status: A dropdown to filter by enabled or disabled status.

Once any filter field has a value, the Filter and Clear buttons become active. Pressing Enter in any filter field also applies the filters. When the filters do not fit in two rows, they collapse into a Filters button; see Filtering the Lists.

At the top right of the filter area, the + Channel button opens the channel creation dialog. The Webhook button opens the webhook configuration dialog for Meta platforms.

Row Actions

Click the actions menu on any row to access the following options:

Edit: Opens the channel configuration dialog with the current values pre-filled. A channel whose type the application no longer provides cannot be edited, and the action reports that channels of that type can still be disabled or deleted.
Set as healthy: Clears the failed status. It appears only on channels currently marked Failed.
Enable / Disable: Toggles the channel's active status. Disabled channels do not receive or process incoming messages, and disabling a web channel takes the chat off its site.
Delete: Removes the channel configuration. If the channel has linked sessions, the system presents additional options before confirming deletion.

Warning

Deleting a channel is a permanent action. If the channel has linked sessions, the Delete channel with linked sessions dialog reports how many are affected and offers two choices: Unlink them, which keeps the conversations and their messages but removes the channel reference, or Delete them, which removes the channel together with all of its sessions. Each choice is confirmed separately, and deleting the sessions cannot be undone.

Delivery Failures

Replies are sent back to the originating platform, and delivery can fail. AI Support distinguishes the cases so that a single bad recipient does not disable a whole channel. Each failure is reported in the session as a system message that only administrators see:

An authentication failure marks the channel Failed and pauses it: no further replies are sent until the channel configuration is updated and saved, or the Set as healthy action is used. An expired or revoked access token is the usual cause. The same applies when the platform rejects the upload of a reply's attachment because of the token.
A rate limit imposed by the platform is reported as transient, without pausing the channel.
A failure affecting only one recipient is reported with the reason, and the channel keeps working for everyone else.
Any other failure is reported with the reason the platform gave, without pausing the channel.

Replies longer than the platform accepts in a single message are sent in several parts. When a part fails, the notice also states how many parts were delivered, such as 2 of 3 parts of the reply were delivered., so that whoever sends the reply again knows what the customer has already received.

System messages, including these notices, are never delivered to the customer.

Attachments are handled separately, and every problem with them is reported to administrators only:

When an incoming attachment cannot be downloaded from the platform, the user's message is still processed without it.
An incoming file larger than the maximum attachment size of the application is not downloaded, and the notice states the limit, such as voice.ogg was not downloaded: it is larger than 10 MB.
When the assistant reads an incoming attachment only in part, or cannot read it at all, the session says so, since the customer never sees the application.
When an outgoing attachment cannot be sent, the failure is reported with the file name. Instagram fetches attachments by URL, so outgoing Instagram attachments are left out, with a notice, until the application declares its public address; see Setting up Meta Channels.

Adding and Editing a Channel

Clicking the + Channel button or the Edit action opens a tabbed dialog with one tab per channel type: WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Web, and any type the application adds. When creating a new channel, all tabs are available and the desired type is selected by switching tabs. When editing an existing channel, only the tab for that channel's type is active.

All channel types share the following common fields:

Name (required): A descriptive name for this channel configuration. Must be unique.
Enabled: A toggle that determines whether the channel is active. New channels are enabled by default.
Assistant (required): The AI assistant that will handle conversations received through this channel. The assistant determines which language model, system prompt, and document categories are used when responding to incoming messages.

The platform-specific fields are described in the sections below.

The application can apply rules of its own to a channel, such as the format of an account identifier. When it rejects a channel, the reason it gives is shown as a warning and the channel is not saved. The same applies when a channel is enabled, disabled, or set as healthy. Any other failure shows An error occurred.

Channel Creation Dialog — tabs select the platform type

WhatsApp

The WhatsApp tab collects the credentials required to connect to a WhatsApp Business account via the Meta Cloud API.

Phone number (required): The WhatsApp Business phone number in E.164 format without special characters (for example, 442087712924).
Meta phone id (required): The numeric Phone Number ID assigned to this number in the Meta developer dashboard. This identifier is used to send outbound messages.
Token value (required): Under the Access token section, the permanent access token for the Meta app that has the WhatsApp Business API permission. The field is masked; use the reveal button to view the value.

Facebook

The Facebook tab collects the credentials for a Facebook Page integration.

Page ID (required): The numeric identifier of the Facebook Page that will send and receive messages. This can be found in the page's About section or the Meta developer dashboard.
Page access token (required): The page access token with pages_messaging permission. The field is masked; use the reveal button to view the value.

Instagram

The Instagram tab collects the credentials for an Instagram professional account integration, under an Account configuration section.

Instagram account ID (required): The numeric ID of the Instagram Business Account that will send and receive messages. This ID is available in the Meta developer dashboard.
Facebook Page access token (required): The access token of the Facebook Page linked to this Instagram Business Account. The field is masked; use the reveal button to view the value.
Facebook Page ID (optional): The Facebook Page linked to this Instagram Business Account.

Web

The Web tab connects a website that shows the embedded chat, so that its visitors talk to the channel's assistant. Setting up the embedded chat itself is covered in Setting up the Embedded Chat.

Site address (required): The address of the site that shows the chat, such as https://example.com. The helper text notes that the field requires the embedded chat integration. The address must have an http or https scheme and nothing after the host; otherwise the field reports Enter the site's address with its scheme and nothing after the host, such as https://example.com. Each site talks to a single assistant, so an address another channel already uses is rejected with Another channel already serves this site.

Only sites with an enabled web channel can load the chat. The address must match the one visitors see exactly, so a site reachable both as https://example.com and as https://www.example.com needs a channel for each.

Visitors of the site appear in the application as users named visitor- followed by a short code, and their conversations are sessions of the web channel, answered like any other.

Warning

Visitors are anonymous and cannot ask for their conversations to be removed, so the application can be configured to delete web channel sessions after a period without messages, 90 days by default. When this clean-up is enabled, the deletion is permanent and includes every message and attachment of those sessions.

Webhook Setup (Meta Platforms)

WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram channels receive incoming messages via Meta webhooks. After creating a channel, you must register the application's webhook endpoint in the Meta developer dashboard so that Meta can forward messages to the AI assistant.

Click the Webhook button in the top toolbar to open the webhook configuration dialog. The dialog has one tab per Meta platform. Each tab displays two read-only fields:

Callback URL: The full URL of this application's webhook endpoint for the platform. Copy this value into the Callback URL field when configuring the webhook in the Meta developer dashboard.
Verify Token: The token that Meta will use to verify the webhook subscription. Copy this value into the Verify Token field in the Meta developer dashboard.

The verify token is configured in the application's application.properties using the following properties:

appjars.aisupport.integrations.whatsapp.verify-token=<your_token>
appjars.aisupport.integrations.facebook.verify-token=<your_token>
appjars.aisupport.integrations.instagram.verify-token=<your_token>

The webhook endpoints are fixed at the following paths relative to the application root:

Platform	Webhook path
WhatsApp	`api/webhooks/whatsapp`
Facebook	`api/webhooks/facebook`
Instagram	`api/webhooks/instagram`

Copy buttons are available next to each field to copy the values to the clipboard without having to select the text manually.

Warning

Each platform's webhook endpoint must be switched on in the application configuration before it exists. Creating a channel in this view is not enough on its own.

appjars.aisupport.integrations.whatsapp.enabled=true
appjars.aisupport.integrations.facebook.enabled=true
appjars.aisupport.integrations.instagram.enabled=true

All three default to false. While a platform is switched off, its callback URL returns a not-found response, Meta cannot verify the subscription, and incoming messages are never delivered — even though the channel appears correctly configured and enabled in the grid. Enable only the platforms actually in use, and restart the application after changing these properties.

Configuring the Meta side of the integration — creating the app, granting permissions, and generating tokens — is covered in Setting up Meta Channels.