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T-Soft WhatsApp Integration: Setup and Automated Messages

The three steps that connect a T-Soft store to WhatsApp, the six automated messages that run on T-Soft, choosing a number, consent and templates.

Pushouse19 min read
Three chat bubbles with shopping cart, bell and check mark icons
Contents

To send automated WhatsApp messages from your T-Soft store, you first connect your business number to the WhatsApp Business Platform through Meta’s official setup flow. You then enter your store’s domain and your T-Soft web service details in the Pushouse panel, and set up the webhooks yourself in your T-Soft admin, following the steps the Pushouse panel shows. Once the connection is in place, six flows run on your T-Soft store: order status updates, shipment tracking messages, abandoned cart reminders, back-in-stock alerts, welcome messages for new members and campaign sends to lists built in Müşteri Kitleleri.

Before you start, four decisions need to be made: which number to connect, where to ask customers for WhatsApp consent, which flows to switch on in the first month and which templates to submit for Meta’s approval. Once you have seen the criteria for each decision and what to watch for on T-Soft, you can plan the setup day and test the flows with your own order before customers see them.

A WhatsApp button on your site does not replace automated notifications

The T-Soft app marketplace (T-Soft Uygulama Marketi) lists a free WhatsApp Button app published by the T-Soft Product Team. Its listing describes it as a free and effective communication tool that lets visitors reach you on WhatsApp straight from your site. With the button, the customer starts the conversation: they tap it, a chat window opens and their message comes to you.

For an order confirmation, a dispatch notice or an abandoned cart, it is the store that sends the first message. According to Meta’s guide to sending messages, a customer who messages or calls you starts a 24-hour customer service window; once it closes, only pre-approved template messages can be sent. Because a customer who places an order may never have written to you, these notifications need a WhatsApp Business Platform connection (often called the WhatsApp Business API) and Meta-approved templates. The WhatsApp order updates page shows in detail how the flow informs the customer at the order stages you choose.

You do not need to remove the button; the two do different jobs. Just make sure the button opens the same number that sends the notifications. If the numbers differ, your conversations with customers end up in two separate places.

Can you connect the WhatsApp number you already use?

Yes; what happens depends on which WhatsApp app the number is used in today. Before setup, check whether the number runs in the WhatsApp Business app, in personal WhatsApp, or has no WhatsApp account at all.

If the number runs in the WhatsApp Business app on your phone, it keeps working in the app after it is connected; on the setup screen you tick a box to say that the number is used in that app. According to the document Meta wrote for this shared use (coexistence), the business keeps sending one-to-one messages from the WhatsApp Business app and the message history is kept in sync between the two. The same document lists what changes in the app: broadcast lists can no longer be used to send, existing lists become read-only, and disappearing messages are switched off in one-to-one chats. If you send campaigns through broadcast lists today, plan to send them with approved templates after the connection.

If the number is active in personal WhatsApp, you need to delete that WhatsApp account before connecting it. That is also the general rule in Meta’s phone number documentation: a number in use on WhatsApp cannot be registered until the account is deleted, and coexistence is the exception for numbers in the WhatsApp Business app. Do not make an employee’s personal line the store number; when the employee leaves, the number your customers know leaves with them.

If you are getting a new number, read the eligibility conditions in the same document; among them, the number must be yours, have a country and area code and be able to receive voice calls or SMS. Put the new number on your site’s contact page, your invoices and your order emails as well; customers recognise from the number that the message comes from your store.

Connect T-Soft in three steps

The connection has three parts, and a different person can handle each one. In a T-Soft WhatsApp integration, whoever manages the business’s Meta accounts connects the number, someone with access to the T-Soft admin provides the web service details, and someone who can open the T-Soft settings sets up the webhooks. Decide who these people are, and what access they will need, before the setup day.

Have these to hand on the setup day:

  • A Facebook login for the person who manages the business’s Meta accounts, and the phone the number to be connected is used on.
  • A T-Soft admin user who can create a web service user and open the Settings → Workflows screen.
  • Your store’s domain, plus the web service user’s name and password.
  • The live page addresses of your KVKK privacy notice and your commercial electronic message consent form.
  • The template texts you will submit for Meta’s approval, and message credits for sending.

To review the preparation with our team, pick a day for a demo call from “Book a Meeting” in the site menu, or send your store’s address and the flows you want to start with through our contact form.

Connect the number through Meta’s setup steps

Pushouse makes this connection through Meta’s official setup screens, via its partner Gupshup. When you start the setup from the panel, a new setup window opens. You first log in with your Facebook (Meta) account; then you select your business’s WhatsApp Business account or create a new one, approve the requested permissions and pick the number to connect. Do not close the window before the process ends, and keep the phone the number runs on within reach.

Enter the domain and web service details in the panel

The T-Soft connection screen in the Pushouse panel asks for your store’s domain and for the web service user’s username and password; the setup guide on the screen tells you to prepare this user in your T-Soft admin first. Type the domain without https:// or www, in the form magazam.com. If you do not know how to create a web service user, ask T-Soft support. Enter the password on the screen yourself rather than sending it by email or chat; if you later change this user’s password in T-Soft, update the password on the connection screen the same day.

The same screen asks for two more addresses: the pages that hold your KVKK privacy notice and your commercial electronic message (ETK) consent form. If your site does not have these pages yet, prepare them with your legal adviser before setup. This is also where you choose how long after abandonment the cart reminder goes out; to set the delay, you can use the criteria in our article on timing the abandoned cart message.

Set up the webhooks yourself in the T-Soft admin

A webhook is a link that instantly notifies another system when something happens in your store. T-Soft’s developer documentation also presents webhooks as the way to react to real-time events and connect your own systems. You, as the store, handle the T-Soft side of the setup. The webhook section in the Pushouse panel shows the screen to open in your T-Soft admin (Ayarlar → İş Akışları, Settings → Workflows) and the fields to fill in there, step by step; follow the steps in that order. If you cannot find the webhook section in your T-Soft admin, ask T-Soft support whether the feature is enabled on your account.

What your store needs ready for each flow

All six flows use the same connection, but each depends on a piece of store data being right, and each has its own template and its own consent condition.

Status updates go out as the order moves forward in the admin

When an order moves into the approval, packing, handover to the carrier or delivery stage, the customer receives a message with the order number and the new status; you decide at which stages the message goes out. A customer who chooses bank transfer (havale or EFT) sees the bank and account details needed for payment, together with your IBAN, right in this message. Because the messages follow status changes, your team has to update statuses in the T-Soft admin on time; if a parcel has left but the order still sits at “confirmed” in the admin, that customer never gets the “shipped” message.

Hello, we have received your order {{order number}}. Our account details for your bank transfer: {{bank name}}, {{account name}}, {{IBAN}}. If you write your order number in the description field, we can match your payment faster.

The shipping message depends on the tracking number

When the order’s shipping details are created, the message sent to the customer contains the order and tracking numbers and a button that opens the page where the parcel can be followed. The message goes out only once per order, no “on its way” message is sent for an order that has already been delivered, and notices for shipments created late in the day wait until the next morning. Because the flow starts when the shipping details are created, the tracking number has to be added to the order without delay. Plan which order status steps you switch on together with the shipping notice, so that the customer learns about the dispatch in a single message, with the tracking number. The WhatsApp order tracking page shows the steps of the flow.

Your order is on its way. Order no: {{order number}}, tracking no: {{tracking number}}. You can follow your parcel step by step using the button below.

A customer who adds a product to the cart and leaves without completing the order receives a reminder that opens with their name once the waiting time you chose has passed; adding a discount code is up to you. Customers who have placed their order get no reminder, and no second message is sent for the same cart. Orders and revenue that come back through the reminder show up in your panel. Since the reminder can only go to customers whose number and consent are on file, the way you collect consent determines how many people this flow reaches. Before giving a code, run the margin calculation in our article on discount codes in cart reminders; the WhatsApp cart recovery page shows how the module works.

Hello {{customer name}}, the items you added to your cart are still saved. Tap the button below to pick up where you left off. If you have a question about sizing or delivery, just reply to this message.

Back-in-stock alerts need sizes and colours set up as variants

When a product sells out, the customer opens a form with the notify-me button on the product page, picks the size or colour they are waiting for, enters their phone number and ticks the commercial message and KVKK consent boxes; no membership is required. When the product is restocked, they hear only about the variant they chose, and the link in the message takes them straight to the product page. The number of alerts is capped by the units that come back in: if a hundred people are waiting for a product and five units arrive, the message does not go to all hundred. For customers to get the right alert, set up sizes and colours as separate variants in T-Soft and keep stock quantities up to date. The back-in-stock message examples help when you write the text; you will find the module’s details on the WhatsApp back-in-stock alerts page.

A visitor who fills in the sign-up form and gives contact consent receives a welcome message that addresses them by name; adding a welcome code is optional. If you add a code, it is checked before sending to make sure it works. A number receives the welcome only once; if the customer later opens a new account, the message is not repeated. If you plan to give a coupon, decide how many days the code stays valid and from which basket value it applies using the calculations in our article on welcome coupon validity and minimum spend; see the WhatsApp new member welcome page for the details of the flow.

Build a campaign list in Müşteri Kitleleri with one sentence

The screen called Müşteri Kitleleri (customer audiences) in the panel builds customer groups from the purchase data imported from your store. You type a sentence such as “bought trousers in the last 60 days but no sweatshirt”; the screen shows the size of the group, the number of people in it you can message and its net revenue together. You can export the list to Excel or move it straight into a WhatsApp bulk messaging send. A group made up of customers who have not given consent appears on the screen but cannot become a message list. You can see more example queries on the Website AI Reporting page.

Modules you can add on T-Soft beyond the six flows

This guide concentrates on the six flows, but the T-Soft connection opens the way to other modules too:

Every WhatsApp message a store initiates falls under two separate sets of rules. Under the WhatsApp Business Messaging Policy, you may message someone only when both of these hold: the person has given you their number (or username), and they have confirmed that they wish to receive later messages from you. Because the condition does not distinguish between types of message, order and shipping notifications need consent too. Under the policy, choosing how to collect consent and collecting it lawfully is solely the business’s responsibility.

Turkish legislation, by contrast, looks at the purpose of the message. Article 6 of Law No. 6563 says commercial electronic messages may be sent to recipients only with their prior consent. The Regulation on Commercial Communication and Commercial Electronic Messages does not require prior consent for notifications about purchases and deliveries, but it does not allow any product or service to be promoted in them (Article 6). Article 7 of the regulation requires consents not obtained through the Message Management System (İYS) to be recorded in the system within three business days; a consent that is not recorded is invalid. Our guide to the post-purchase message sequence also shows which consent each post-purchase message relies on.

On your T-Soft store, ask for consent where the customer gives their number, and keep it separate for each type of message: receiving order notifications on WhatsApp is one consent, campaign and reminder messages are another. Both should be requested with separate, unticked boxes and a sentence that states plainly what the customer is agreeing to. Ask T-Soft support how you can add these fields to your sign-up form and checkout page. Cart reminders and welcome messages sent for marketing depend on the contact consent the customer has given; for back-in-stock alerts, the customer gives their number and consent in the form on the product page themselves. The cart, stock and welcome flows do not send campaign messages to anyone who has not given consent. A customer who wants to stop cart or stock messages taps “Tanıtımları Durdur” (stop promotions) at the bottom of the message; keep this button when you write your own templates.

Switch the flows on two at a time, in order

If you switch on all six flows on the same day, it becomes hard to tell replies, opt-outs and template errors apart. Opening the flows two at a time and reading the replies for at least a week after each step gives you time to fix the texts. For most T-Soft stores, a reasonable starting order looks like this:

  1. Put order status updates and the shipping notice first. Both carry information the customer who placed the order is already waiting for, contain no promotion and inform the customer before they have to ask. All they need is consent for order notifications, approved templates and order statuses that are updated on time in the admin.
  2. Next, switch on abandoned cart reminders. Because the flow only goes to customers who have given consent, it reaches more people once your consent collection is in place; settle the waiting time and the discount code question from the start.
  3. If your products often sell out by size or colour, make back-in-stock alerts the third flow. Since the customer asked for the alert, the message arrives as news they are waiting for.
  4. If your member count grows steadily, add the welcome message; if you will give a coupon, work out its validity period and minimum spend in advance.
  5. Leave Müşteri Kitleleri campaigns until last, make the first send to a small group and, from the start, limit how many campaigns the same customer gets per week using the measures in our article on campaign message frequency.

The order will not be the same for every store. In a clothing store with a wide size range, back-in-stock alerts may come before cart reminders; in a cosmetics store selling one-size products, back-in-stock alerts play a small part and the welcome message moves up. When deciding which to bring forward, set the question your support line hears most often next to the products that sell out most often.

Decide each template’s category before submitting it to Meta

Every message in the automated flows is based on a template. According to Meta’s template documentation, templates can only be sent once they are approved, and each template falls into one of three categories: authentication, marketing or utility. Meta’s categorization guide describes utility templates as following up on an action or request by the customer; order confirmations and shipping notices belong here. The same guide lists a reminder to a customer who left items in the cart among its marketing examples, and such messages count as marketing even when the user requested them. Under the guide, an order update with a promotional line added also moves into the marketing category.

The category also sets what Meta charges per message. According to Meta’s pricing documentation, a template message is charged only when it is delivered, and the rate depends on the template’s category and the recipient’s country calling code. In Pushouse, the messages you send are deducted from your message credits (kontör), which are kept separate from the module subscription. When you plan the budget, calculate the module fee and the number of messages you expect separately.

When writing templates, do not add a discount code, a new product or a campaign line to order and shipping messages; the template’s category changes, and you also run into the regulation’s ban on promotion. Give each message a single job, mention your store’s name in the text and read each template with its variables filled in from a real order. Campaign templates need a “Tanıtımları Durdur” (stop promotions) button; customers leave the list with this button, and single words such as “DUR” or “STOP” do not count as an opt-out.

Test with your own order before going live

When setup is finished, do a test run with your own number. Place a test order with each payment method your store offers; when you choose bank transfer, check that the bank details appear correctly in the message. Move the order through its statuses step by step in the T-Soft admin and confirm that a message arrives at each step you selected. Take the test order through your shipping process; once the tracking number is created, open the button in the shipping message on your phone.

Then open a new membership with contact consent and wait for the welcome message; if you added a coupon, try the code in the cart. Add products to the cart with the member account, leave without completing the purchase and check whether the reminder arrives after the waiting time you chose. Leave an alert request yourself for a size that is out of stock, then increase that size’s stock. In every message, check that the link opens the right page, the variables are filled in and no campaign line has crept into the order messages; while you are at it, make sure your campaign templates still carry the “Tanıtımları Durdur” button.

If a message you expect does not arrive, note the step where it stopped together with the test order number and send it to us through the contact form.

Decide who will answer replies to your messages

A customer who receives an automated message may also reply: they ask when the parcel will arrive, want to change their address or ask about sizing. Within the 24-hour window opened by the customer’s message, replies need no template. Before setup, decide who will reply before the window closes and how weekends are covered.

To handle incoming messages, you can use the WhatsApp question routing flow. When a customer writes, a welcome message with up to three topic buttons goes out. If the customer types their own sentence instead of tapping a button, the message is routed to the topic you defined, based on the keywords it contains. When your team takes over the conversation from the panel, the bot goes quiet; it steps back in 30 minutes after your team’s last reply. Choose the topic buttons based on the questions your order messages attract most often; order tracking, returns and exchanges, and product questions are a good start for most stores.

Read the replies in the first few weeks. When the same question keeps coming back, the related message is missing something: if customers often ask about the delivery day after the shipping notice, add an estimated delivery time to the order confirmation and the product page; if questions about returns increase, put a link to your return conditions in the delivery message.

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