The Instagram integration allows you to respond to all your incoming direct messages right from Groove. This way, you can keep all your conversations in one place!

Adding an Instagram Channel

To add a new channel to your account, navigate to Settings → Channels → Chat & social → Add a channel, then select Instagram, and then follow the steps:

  1. Give your new channel a name and a color. These are just for you; your customers will never see this.
  2. Click Authenticate with Instagram and follow the flow in the pop-up. It's important to allow all requested permissions, as otherwise the channel won't work correctly.
  3. Select who can access your new channel.

With this, you're all set!

Configuring an Instagram Channel

To configure your channel, go to Settings → Channels → Chat & social and click on the name of the channel that you want to update. This will take you to the settings pages, where you're able to:

  • Change the name and color.
  • Configure the chat routing.
  • Update who can access the channel.

Removing an Instagram Channel

To delete your channel, go to Settings → Channels → Chat & social and click on the name of the channel that you want to delete. Then, navigate to the Advanced tab, and click Delete channel.

A drawer will open up, asking you to confirm the deletion. After doing so, the channel will be permanently deleted.

Using an Instagram Channel

An Instagram channel will work nearly the same as our Live Chat channels. You can access it by going into Chats in the menu on the far left. From there, handle conversations as you normally would!

Caveats

  • Changing a conversation's state in Groove doesn't affect the conversation state in Messenger itself.
  • Instagram and Facebook are owned by the same company, Meta. To connect an Instagram account, it needs to be linked to a Facebook page. You'll need it linked before trying to add the Instagram integration.
    If your Instagram integration disconnects, it could be an error on Meta's end (any trouble connecting via Oauth will show a disconnected state). Log it with our support team and we'll look into it with you.

Limitations

We intend to have the channels function as closely as possible to the actual official interface, but there are some notable features we aren't able to add due to missing API support:

  • You can't send likes. Note: We do offer a workaround for this, in the way of sending a like emoji instead.
  • You can't send message reactions.
  • You can't send stickers.
  • Meta's API does not support multiple images sent at once

Reply Times

Any Instagram channel will have to adhere to certain time limits. Read more about that in our article Instagram/Messenger Reply Times.