Telegram

Datafly Signal delivers events server-to-server to the Telegram Bot API, posting a formatted chat message for each matched event. Use it for operational and sales alerting — a message in your team’s channel when an order completes, a sign-up happens, or a lead is captured. Because delivery is server-side, no bot token is ever exposed in the browser.

Why route Telegram through Datafly Signal

• Alerts fire off the same event stream as everything else. No separate instrumentation, and no gap between what your destinations received and what Telegram told you about.
• Which events reach you is configuration, not code. The trigger conditions live in the pipeline alongside every other rule, so tuning what reaches Telegram does not require an application release.
• Alert volume is rate-limited. Signal applies the same rate limiting and retry behaviour it uses for any destination, so an incident that spikes your event rate does not flood the channel.

Prerequisites

• A Telegram bot. Create one by messaging @BotFather, running /newbot, and copying the HTTP API token it returns (looks like 123456789:ABCdef…).

• A destination chat ID:

  • Private chat — a positive integer. The recipient must send /start to your bot first.
  • Group / supergroup — a negative integer (supergroups are prefixed -100). The bot must be a member of the group.
  • Channel — -100… or the public @channelusername. The bot must be an admin of the channel to post.

  The quickest way to find a chat ID: add the bot to the chat, send a message, then open https://api.telegram.org/bot<token>/getUpdates and read result[].message.chat.id.

Configuration

Configure in Signal

1. In the management UI, go to Integrations and add Telegram.
2. Paste your Bot Token and Chat ID.
3. Attach the integration to a pipeline and select the Conversion Alerts preset (or build your own event mappings).
4. Save. Signal begins posting messages for matched events.

API Endpoint

Signal sends each event as a POST to:

https://api.telegram.org/bot<token>/sendMessage

The bot token is carried in the URL path — Telegram has no separate authorization header. The request body is JSON:

{
  "chat_id": "-1001234567890",
  "text": "New order\nOrder: 1234\nValue: 49.99 GBP"
}

A success response is { "ok": true, "result": { … } }. Failures return { "ok": false, "error_code": <int>, "description": "…" } with a matching HTTP status (400 bad request, 401 invalid token, 403 bot blocked or not an admin). Rate-limit responses (429) include a retry_after and are retried automatically.

Identity Signals

No identity data is sent: no email, phone, name, address or user ID reaches the chat.

Event Mapping

A missing value shows as -, and an over-long value is truncated so the text stays within Telegram’s 4,096 characters. No message carries the visitor’s email, phone, name or address.

Messages are plain text (no parse_mode): with HTML or Markdown parsing, a <, > or & in an event value would make Telegram reject the message. The message is sent to the configured chat_id; a message without text is not sent.

Example

{
  "chat_id": "-1001234567890",
  "text": "New order\nOrder: ORD-001\nValue: 129.99 GBP"
}

Testing

1. With your bot token, confirm the bot is reachable: open https://api.telegram.org/bot<token>/getMe — you should see { "ok": true }.

2. Send a test message manually to confirm the chat is reachable:

   curl -X POST "https://api.telegram.org/bot<token>/sendMessage" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{"chat_id":"<chat_id>","text":"Signal test ✅"}'

   A 200 with "ok": true means the bot can post to that chat.

3. Trigger one of the mapped events (e.g. complete a test order) and confirm the message arrives in the chat.

Troubleshooting