Facebook & Instagram
Connect Messenger Pages and Instagram Direct via Meta OAuth.
Facebook Messenger and Instagram Direct connect through Meta's OAuth flow. You authorize Chatasist, pick the assets to connect, and Chatasist subscribes to message events.
Facebook Messenger#
Authorize with Meta
Start the connect flow from Settings → Channels → Facebook. A Meta OAuth popup asks you to grant access and select Pages.
Select Pages
Chatasist reads the Pages you manage (name, category, picture) and lets you choose which to connect.
Connect
For each selected Page, Chatasist exchanges a long-lived token, subscribes the Page to
messages, and creates one channel per Page. The Page's profile image is imported
automatically.
Inbound messages arrive on Chatasist's shared Meta webhook, which verifies Meta's challenge token and routes events to the right Page channel (echoes and your own outbound messages are filtered out).
You can assign a Meta AI persona to a Facebook channel so the AI agent's replies appear under a distinct Messenger identity. See AI agent.
Instagram Direct#
You can connect Instagram two ways. Both bring your Instagram DMs into the shared inbox; they differ in how you sign in and in one messaging capability.
Connect straight through Instagram from Settings → Channels → Instagram. You authorize with your Instagram Professional account — no Facebook Page required. Chatasist reads your profile (username, name, picture, follower count) and starts receiving DMs.
In Settings → Channels, each connected Instagram channel shows which method it uses under its name — Instagram · Business Login (signed in through Instagram) or Instagram · Facebook Login (signed in through a linked Facebook Page) — so you can tell the two apart at a glance.
Want threaded replies on Instagram? Use Instagram via Facebook. Instagram's own (non-Facebook) connection can't thread replies in DMs — there, a reply arrives as a normal message (still quoted in your inbox). Both options need an Instagram Professional account.
Forwarding post comments#
Comments left on your Facebook and Instagram posts can be forwarded into the inbox as conversations, so your team answers them alongside DMs.
Comment forwarding requires the Scale plan or above. On lower plans the setting is shown but locked.
Enable forwarding
Open Settings → Channels, edit your Facebook or Instagram channel, and turn on Forward post comments. New comments on your posts then appear as conversations in the inbox.
Choose how comments are answered
Toggle AI replies to comments to let the AI agent answer forwarded comments automatically. Leave it off to keep comments human-answered — they still arrive in the inbox, they just wait for an agent.
Replies you send to a forwarded comment are posted as a public reply under the original comment. Comment conversations are kept separate from a customer's Direct Message thread.
The AI replies to comments switch is independent of the channel's main Allow AI answers setting — you can let the AI handle DMs while keeping public comment replies human-only, or the other way around.
Moderating a comment#
On a forwarded comment, open the message's ⋯ menu in the inbox for three actions (Scale plan and above):
- Reply privately (DM) — send a Direct Message to the person who commented, instead of replying in public. The DM is recorded in the conversation.
- Hide / Unhide — hide the comment from the post (or bring it back) without deleting it.
- Delete comment — permanently remove the comment from the post.
What else syncs into the inbox#
Beyond DMs and post comments, these also appear in the inbox for Facebook and Instagram:
- Message reactions — when a customer reacts to one of your messages (❤️ 👍 …), the reaction shows on that message and updates live; it disappears if they remove it.
- Replies sent outside Chatasist — if your team answers a conversation from the Instagram app, Messenger, or Meta Business Suite, that reply is mirrored into the inbox thread and the conversation is marked answered, so your history stays complete wherever you reply.
- Instagram story mentions & replies — when a customer mentions your account in their story (or replies to your story), it arrives as a conversation with the story image.
Connected before comment forwarding or tappable cards existed? Open Settings → Channels, click the ⋯ menu on the Facebook or Instagram channel, and choose Reconnect. This re-runs the Meta authorization so the channel picks up the newer permissions — post comments, and the events behind tappable cards — no need to delete and re-add it.
Orders as tappable cards#
On Messenger, a customer who asks about their orders gets them as a swipeable row of cards — the product picture, the full order number, its status and the total — instead of a list they have to read and retype.
Tapping one opens that order: the agent looks it up and answers with its details, and the customer never types an order number.
Cards need the customer to be confirmed, so the agent knows whose orders to show. See Customer identification.
Messenger truncates a plain button's label at twenty characters, which is shorter than most order numbers — cards exist so the number stays readable and the picture makes the order recognisable at a glance.
Token auto-refresh#
Instagram tokens expire, so Chatasist runs a daily job that refreshes any Instagram channel token within 10 days of expiry — no manual reconnection needed under normal conditions.
Freezing a channel#
Freeze a Facebook or Instagram channel to stop accepting incoming messages without disconnecting it. While a channel is frozen, new Direct Messages sent to it are turned away at Chatasist's webhook — they don't create conversations and the AI agent never sees them. Unfreeze at any time to resume.
Open the channel menu
Go to Settings → Channels and click the ⋯ menu on the Facebook or Instagram channel.
Choose Freeze
Pick Freeze. The channel card shows a Frozen badge so the paused state is visible at a glance.
Unfreeze when ready
Open the ⋯ menu again and choose Unfreeze to start accepting messages again.
Freezing only affects incoming Direct Messages. The channel stays connected, its token keeps refreshing, and past conversations remain — only new inbound DMs are turned away while frozen, and they are not queued for later. Forwarded post comments (if enabled) are not affected by freezing.
Use Freeze to pause a channel during off-hours, a migration, or an incident — it's faster and safer than deleting and re-adding the channel.
Turn inbound email into tickets.