Connect a WhatsApp Business number and your agent answers customers directly in WhatsApp. When someone messages your number, Engine64 runs the agent, replies on WhatsApp, and stores the exchange as a Engine64 conversation — the sender’s number is captured as a lead, so every chat lands in your inbox like any other conversation.
Unlike the outbound webhook destinations, this is an inbound, two-way channel: messages flow into Engine64 and replies flow back out to WhatsApp.
Prerequisites
You’ll set this up in Meta’s infrastructure and then connect it in Engine64. You need:
- A Meta app with the WhatsApp product added (via the Meta App Dashboard → WhatsApp → API setup).
- A WhatsApp Business phone number registered to that app.
- A long-lived access token — a system-user token is recommended so it doesn’t expire. Meta’s WhatsApp Cloud API getting-started guide walks through creating one.
Connect Engine64
1. Point Meta’s webhook at Engine64
In the Meta App Dashboard, open WhatsApp → Configuration and set the Webhook fields:
- Callback URL:
https://<your-app-domain>/api/channels/meta - Verify token: the exact value of your
META_WEBHOOK_VERIFY_TOKENenvironment variable.
Meta immediately calls the URL to verify the token, so set the env var before
saving. Once verified, subscribe to the messages field so inbound messages
are delivered.
Also set META_APP_SECRET (from the Meta app’s Settings → Basic) as an
environment variable. Engine64 uses it to verify the signature on every inbound
request, so requests that aren’t genuinely from Meta are rejected.
Both META_APP_SECRET and META_WEBHOOK_VERIFY_TOKEN are server-only
environment variables — they are configured on the app, not pasted into the
dashboard.
2. Connect the number in Engine64
In Engine64, open the agent’s Webhooks page and find the WhatsApp (Meta) card. Paste:
- Phone Number ID — the numeric id of your WhatsApp Business number (from WhatsApp → API setup).
- Access Token — the long-lived token from the prerequisites.
Click Connect. Engine64 validates the phone number id and token live against Meta’s Graph API, so a bad token or wrong id is rejected on the spot. Your access token is stored securely server-side and is never shown back to you in the dashboard.
How it behaves
- Inbound text messages run the agent and the reply is sent back on WhatsApp.
- WhatsApp enforces a 24-hour customer-service window: a business can freely reply to a customer for 24 hours after their last message. Proactive or out-of-window messages require pre-approved message templates (a future enhancement), so v1 answers inbound messages within that window.
Disconnecting
Open the WhatsApp (Meta) card and click Disconnect. Inbound messages on that number stop routing to the agent immediately. You can reconnect anytime by pasting the credentials again.
Notes
This same Meta pipeline will back Messenger and Instagram (coming next) — they’ll appear as additional cards on the Webhooks page.