Native forms and flows
Two optional ways to change how the bot talks to customers: native WhatsApp forms for addresses and contact details, and the flow builder, where you design the whole conversation yourself. Both are off until you switch them on; without them the bot works as described in The shopping bot.
Native forms and the flow builder come with the WhatsApp Shop: Flows feature of your plan. If your plan does not include it, the Flows pages and these settings show a lock with the way to add it in Billing → Apps, the bot keeps the standard menu, and no form is sent.
Native WhatsApp forms
When the bot needs a delivery address or contact details, it can send a button that opens a form inside WhatsApp. The customer fills in every field on one screen, your store checks the answers before the form closes, and they arrive in the chat as one reply. Without forms, the bot asks one question at a time, as before. Forms are optional and off for every store until you set them up.
There are two forms:
| Form | What it asks |
|---|---|
| Delivery address form | The address fields your checkout uses: the fields switched on in your Shipping profile fields, required where your checkout requires them, plus the country. Your store's own country is listed first. |
| Contact details form | Full name and email. |
A customer whose WhatsApp number is linked to an account sees their saved name, email and default address already filled in, and can change them before sending. Nothing is used until they send the form.
Where the bot uses them
The forms are used by Take orders in the chat (the in-chat checkout). When a customer checks out in the chat:
- the bot sends the contact details form instead of asking for the name and then the email, and
- the delivery address form instead of asking for each address field in turn.
Each form is followed by the usual first question, so a customer who would rather type, or whose WhatsApp cannot open forms, answers one question at a time as before. When the form comes back, everything it filled is kept and the bot asks only what is still missing — for example a state it could not match to your list. The name on the order is the one from the contact step. A customer who sends a new address after picking a delivery option picks the delivery option and payment again, so the price always fits the address.
With Take orders in the chat off, the bot sends the checkout link as before and no form is sent.
Set up the forms
- In Settings → Messaging, add the WhatsApp Business Account ID to the WhatsApp channel (see Connect your WhatsApp number).
- Open Customers → WhatsApp Shop → WhatsApp Shop settings and scroll to Native WhatsApp forms.
- Switch on Use native WhatsApp forms and click Save changes.
- Click Set up forms. Your store makes its own encryption key, registers it on your WhatsApp number, and publishes both forms in your WhatsApp Business Account. Each form then shows Published.
If WhatsApp refuses a form, it shows Not accepted with WhatsApp's own reasons underneath. Click Set up forms again once the cause is fixed; the other form keeps working meanwhile.
When you change your Shipping profile fields, the address form shows Out of date and the bot goes back to asking question by question for that form. Click Update forms to publish the new version; the old one is retired.
Try a form on your phone
- Send hi to your store's WhatsApp number from your phone. WhatsApp only sends forms within 24 hours of the customer's last message.
- Under Try a form on your phone, pick the form, enter your number with + and the country code, and click Send test form.
- Open WhatsApp, tap the button, fill in the form and send it. The chat answers with what arrived.
Good to know
- The forms' requests reach your store directly from WhatsApp. Your store answers only requests signed with your Meta app secret and encrypted with your store's key, and each form can be sent once.
- The form texts are in English. The bot's other messages are still the ones you write in the settings.
- In a marketplace, the forms are sent only on the store's own WhatsApp number. Chats on a vendor's number ask one question at a time.
- Switch Use native WhatsApp forms off at any time: the bot asks question by question again and no form is sent.
The flow builder
The standard bot is a fixed menu: browse, search, my orders, talk to us. With the flow builder you draw your own conversation instead — a greeting in your words, the questions you want to ask, choices that lead different ways, and the shop actions you need. Open Customers → WhatsApp Shop → Flows.
Make a flow
- Click New flow, name it and start from the Welcome menu (three buttons — Shop, My cart, Talk to us — already connected) or a Blank canvas.
- Drag blocks from the left onto the canvas, or click one to add it in the middle.
- Connect each block: drag from the dot of an exit (on the right of a block) to the block it should lead to. A question's buttons are its exits, so each button leads to its own next step.
- Click a block to set it up on the right. Click the canvas background for the flow's own settings: its name, the block it starts at, and its variables.
- Click Save draft (or press Ctrl+S / Cmd+S). A draft can be saved with problems; only publishing needs none.
The blocks
| Block | What it does | Its exits |
|---|---|---|
| Message | Sends a text, or an image with a caption | Then |
| Buttons | Asks a question with up to 3 reply buttons | One per button; optionally Anything else typed |
| List | Asks a question with a list of up to 10 options | One per option; optionally Anything else typed |
| Question | Waits for a typed answer — text, email, whole number or phone — checks it and keeps it in a variable; a wrong answer gets your retry line and the question again | Then |
| Condition | Checks a variable, whether the customer is linked to an account, whether the store is open now (your opening hours), or whether the chat cart is empty | Yes, No |
| Set variable | Stores a value for later blocks | Then |
| Go to | Continues at another block, for example back to the menu | — |
| Search products | Lists the products matching a search (usually {{query}} from a question) and waits for a pick; new words typed search again | Product picked, Nothing found |
| Show product | A product card with picture and price — a product you choose, or the one picked last | Then, Not available |
| Add to cart | Puts a quantity of that product into the chat cart; stock and quantity rules apply | Added, Could not add |
| Show cart | The chat cart's lines and estimated total | Then, Cart is empty |
| Checkout link | The secure link that opens the chat cart on your store | Then, Not available |
| My orders | The latest orders of a customer linked to an account | Then, Not linked to an account |
| Talk to a person | Hands the chat to your team, like the talk-to-a-person keywords; the flow stops | — |
| End | An optional closing message; the next message starts the flow again | — |
Write {{name}} in any text to insert a variable. Three are always there: {{contact_name}} (the customer's WhatsApp name), {{store_name}} and {{product_name}} (the product picked or shown last).
Problems
The Problems list under the block settings checks the flow as you edit, with the same rules publishing uses: every exit must lead somewhere (except where the flow ends), every block must be reachable from the start, no loop may go round without waiting for the customer, and texts must fit WhatsApp's limits (1024 characters; button titles 20; list options 24). Click a problem to jump to its block; blocks with problems also show a red count on the canvas.
Test, publish, history
- Test opens a chat with the saved draft, as a customer would see it. Nothing is sent to WhatsApp. Unsaved changes are saved first.
- Publish makes the draft what customers get. One flow is published at a time: publishing another takes the first back to draft.
- Then switch on Run my published flow in WhatsApp Shop settings → Flows. While it is off — or when no flow is published — customers get the standard menu.
- History lists every published version; Restore copies one into the draft (publish again to use it). Unpublish brings the standard menu back.
Whatever the flow says, the unsubscribe and talk-to-a-person keywords and the after-hours notice still work first, and your team can take over any chat from the inbox. In a marketplace, the flow answers on the store's own WhatsApp number; chats on a vendor's number keep the standard menu with that vendor's products. On a phone, Flows shows a read-only outline; edit on a tablet or computer.