WhatsApp Flows are meant to be short interactive UI journeys. They are meant to be used one-off, but you can allow users to launch the same flow multiple times. Once you have built an app, you can start getting your users to use your app on WhatsApp. There are multiple ways to get people to use your app:

QR codes make it easy to let users discover apps in the physical world. You can create a QR code for your apps from Peach’s app details screen. When a user scans and clicks on the link from the QR code, it launches WhatsApp on the user’s phone with your WhatsApp phone number selected, and a predefined command in the message text area. When the user sends the message, they will receive a message that includes the app like shown below:

Clicking on Begin Checkin in the message above will launch the App on WhatsApp.

WhatsApp allows you to send a broadcast message to several contacts with a link to your app. This allows you to deliver the app to hundreds, and even thousands of users quickly. WhatsApp requires this message to be approved before you can broadcast it. Peach allows you to create a template with the link to the app, and get approval from WhatsApp, directly from your dashboard.

Once the template is approved, you can create a campaign, upload a list of users that you want to distribute the app to, and launch the campaign so the users can start using the app.

Note: There are restrictions on how many users you can reach out to via a broadcast message. This depends on your Business WhatsApp number and usage.

App flows can be triggered by users when they send a message to your Business WhatsApp number. When you are using a QR Code to initiate an app, you are already using this. With Peach, you’ll be able to set up an auto-responder welcome message that shows up automatically, when a user initiates a new chat. You will be able to configure one or more menus that map to different apps in your account.

When a user taps on one of the menu options in the welcome message, the message with a link to the app is shared with them automatically.

This is an advanced option to launch apps to your users. You can use Peach to trigger apps using automated customer journeys or other automations. Suppose you are a lending company that wants to qualify customers for your loans. You can do this by creating a loan eligibility calculator app, and triggering it automatically based on new leads captured in your CRM. Another example is to create 2 variations of the same app in 2 different languages. In this case, you might want to ask your user to select the language preference first, and then launch the app in the correct language. Both these can be achieved by creating automations on your Peach dashboard.

If you are a developer or a product manager, and want to extend your app by building flows in WhatsApp, then the APIs are the way to go. You can push an event to the Peach API endpoint, that in turn sends a message to one or more users, with a link to the app. To learn more about this, go to the Developers section.