WhatsApp channel update - Check Contact

Index:

1. Introduction
2. WhatsApp user account verification by "/accounts
3. Request
4. Reply

Introduction

By Meta's decision, check contact, which allowed Blip users to check the validity of the phone numbers of their customer base on WhatsApp, is being discontinued. Thus, On-Premise customers will not have access to the resource in the updated version of the channel. They will have to follow, also by Meta's decision, the same pattern as those who use the Cloud API infrastructure, which no longer had this functionality.
Check contact allowed the user to test the validity of a telephone number. WhatsApp returned informing whether that contact was existing or not. In the new version of the channel, this status was no longer reported. Regardless of whether the user has WhatsApp or not, the response is always returned with valid for status and a wa_id.
This all requires more responsibility from our customers to ensure that the contact is correct. You will continue to have visibility of messages that are not delivered, but you will not be able to undo sending a message to a non-existent contact.

Important: The call to /accounts must be made before sending any notifications via the Blip API, regardless of the version of the container the bot is in or in Cloud API. Because the call to /accounts prevents the contact thread from being duplicated. The main difference is that now the new versions of containers will behave similarly to CAPI, where the number is no longer validated by Meta, as mentioned above.

WhatsApp user account verification by "/accounts"

The verification process must be performed for all messages and notifications sent. Even in cases of already validated numbers, WhatsApp does not guarantee a cache of more than 7 days. This can lead to your submission receiving a non-existent contact error in the WhatsApp container base. This definition of cache and valid users is described in the Official WhatsApp Documentation.

Request

The Blip platform will be in charge of calling WhatsApp and carrying out the validation, returning the data of that WhatsApp contact. The call to validate the user via the Blip API is as follows:
YOUR_TOKEN is your bot's authorization key.
PHONE_NUMBER is the user number to be validated. It must be in its complete form with +, DDI, DDD and the number.

Attention point: Do not forget to add the "+" (plus) sign before submitting.

Example: +5531988889999.

POST https://{ORGANIZATION_ID}.http.msging.net/commands HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: application/json
Authorization: Key {YOUR_TOKEN}

{
"id": "{{$guid}}",
"to": "postmaster@wa.gw.msging.net",
"method": "get",
"uri": "lime://wa.gw.msging.net/accounts/{PHONE_NUMBER}"
}

In case of batch requests:

POST https://{ORGANIZATION_ID}.http.msging.net/commands HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: application/json
Authorization: Key {YOUR_TOKEN}

{
"id": "{{$guid}}",
"to": "postmaster@wa.gw.msging.net",
"method": "get",
"uri": "lime://wa.gw.msging.net/accounts?identities=+5531988889999;+5531966667777"
}

Note: Be sure to put the “+” character before each number.

Reply

In response to this call there will be some contact information. The most important one here is the alternativeAccount, which must be used to trigger the notification. After validation, it is essential to save the value returned in this field. The other fields are extra information that will not always be available, depending on the contact.

Example: 5531988889999@wa.gw.msging.net.

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json

{
"type": "application/vnd.lime.account+json",
"resource": {
"fullName": "John Doe",
"alternativeAccount": "5531988889999@wa.gw.msging.net",
"identity": "5531988889999@wa.gw.msging.net",
"phoneNumber": "+5531988889999",
"source": "WhatsApp"
},
"method": "get",
"status": "success",
"id": "{{$guid}}",
"from": "postmaster@wa.gw.msging.net",
"to": "bot@msging.net",
"metadata": {
"#command.uri": "lime://wa.gw.msging.net/accounts/+5531988889999"
}
}

Note: When sending message templates, it will no longer be necessary to use the Namespace field. Therefore, it is important to remove it to avoid any inconsistencies in the future.

For more information, visit the discussion on the subject in our community or the videos on our channel. 😃