Why connect Messenger to your agent
A Page’s inbox mostly receives simple questions: opening hours, prices, availability. They often arrive when nobody is at a screen.
A bot on Messenger has a well-known flaw: it talks over the team. Alyas handles this by default: a human reply pauses the agent in the conversation concerned, with nothing to switch on.
What the agent does with Messenger
- A customer sends a text message to your Page. Meta passes it to Alyas, which checks its signature.
- Alyas picks the agent chosen when the Page was connected. It replies in a support role, from its knowledge, and never publishes anything.
- If you have set a delay, the agent waits before replying to the first message in a conversation, to leave you the lead. During that delay, several messages sent in a row get a single reply, to the last one.
- The agent can record a request or book an appointment in your connected calendar: the Messenger thread serves as the contact.
- As soon as a team member replies from Messenger or Meta Business Suite, the agent pauses for that customer, for a few hours or until you restart it, depending on your setting. Meta’s automatic replies, such as an away message or instant reply, do not trigger this pause.
What you need to connect Messenger
- A Facebook Page on which you can grant permissions.
- Connecting that Page from the Connections page of your workspace, with the messaging permissions requested.
- A chat agent to link to the Page.
- The agent’s “human first” settings: the delay before its first reply (immediate by default) and the length of the pause when a human replies (4 hours by default, or until you restart it).
Limits to be aware of
- Only text messages are handled: a photo, a voice message or a sticker without text gets no reply from the agent.
- Comments published under your posts are not handled.
- The Page’s messaging depends on Meta permissions: their approval on Meta’s side determines when you can go live.
- The pause is triggered by replies sent from Messenger or Meta Business Suite; what is said elsewhere, by phone for example, is not detected.
Frequently asked questions
Does the agent reply to comments on my posts?
No. It only handles private text messages sent to the Page.
How does the agent know a human has replied?
Meta tells Alyas about every message sent by the Page, along with the app that sent it. A message that does not come from Alyas, and is not an automatic Meta reply sent within seconds of the customer’s message, is attributed to a team member.
How long does the pause last?
By default 4 hours, restarted with each new message from the team. You can choose another length, or a pause that runs until you restart the agent for that customer.
How do I restart the agent before the pause ends?
In Messages, with “Mark as taken over” on the conversation.
Can the agent post on my Page?
Not when replying to messages: in this support role, it never publishes any content.
Does it know what the team told the customer?
Yes. Messages sent by the team are kept in the conversation history: when the agent resumes, it takes them into account.