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How to integrate Telegram with Dialogflow

Byaravindmc

In this tutorial, I explain how to integrate your Dialogflow bot with the Telegram chat app.

Why I prefer Telegram when creating tutorials

I usually prefer to use Telegram for creating tutorials and demos.

There are a few reasons for this:

  • The process of creating the bot inside Telegram is quick since you can do it by sending messages to a designated “BotFather” account
  • Telegram has only a single access token, so the integration steps are fewer
  • Telegram supports a few rich responses such as buttons
  • Hyperlinks in the text response of Dialogflow are automatically converted to clickable links inside the Telegram chat window
  • Telegram supports multiple responses per message (for example, the 1-click web demo doesn’t support this)

How to integrate Dialogflow and Telegram

With that said, here are the steps.

Talk to the BotFather

First, you need to talk to BotFather. 🙂

Type /newbot

Choose a name for your bot

Choose a username for your bot

Copy the access token provided by BotFather

Choose the Telegram integration inside Dialogflow

Paste the access token and start the bot

And that’s it. Now you can go to Telegram, find your bot (you can search for it by name) and then start a conversation with it.

About this website

BotFlo1 was created by Aravind Mohanoor as a website which provided training and tools for non-programmers who were2 building Dialogflow chatbots.

This website has now expanded into other topics in Natural Language Processing, including the recent Large Language Models (GPT etc.) with a special focus on helping non-programmers identify and use the right tool for their specific NLP task. 

For example, when not to use GPT

1 BotFlo was previously called MiningBusinessData. That is why you see that name in many videos

2 And still are building Dialogflow chatbots. Dialogflow ES first evolved into Dialogflow CX, and Dialogflow CX itself evolved to add Generative AI features in mid-2023