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Instagram Direct MessagesUpdated 20 days ago

The Instagram Direct messages channel lets you receive and reply to Instagram direct messages and story mentions from Gorgias.

When a customer mentions you in an Instagram story or sends you a Direct Message via Instagram, a ticket will be created. This ticket will not only contain the latest message that the customer sent you, but it'll also contain the DM history that you have with the user as well of up to 50 DMs. You can respond to this message the same way you respond to chat or Facebook Messenger tickets.

Story content is not added to created tickets. Instead, a hyperlink to the story is provided. Responding to story-mention tickets will open a direct message that references that story mention in the first response.


Steps

Your Facebook business page needs to be associated with your Instagram business account.

1. In Instagram Business Messenger, navigate to Settings -> Privacy -> Messages and make sure your Allow Access to Messages setting is set to Active.


2. In Gorgias, navigate to Settings -> App Store -> My Apps -> Facebook, Messenger & Instagram, and click on the desired Facebook page.

3. Click the Reconnect button. This will take you to a Facebook page and ask you to reconnect the account again, so an admin of the Facebook page must do this step.

4. Check the Direct messages checkbox under the Instagram section and click Save Changes.

If you've tried all these steps and your Instagram page is still not connected, please review the connection between your Facebook page and Instagram account.


Respond to Instagram Comments via Direct Message

You can privately respond to an Instagram comment, which will create a new Instagram Direct message ticket in Gorgias.

To do so, open an Instagram comment ticket, hover over the shopper's message, and click the Direct message button:


Selecting this button will open a pop-up text editor, which you must use to write out your first response and initiate the Instagram Direct message conversation.


Only the first Direct message response you send will be sent from the original Instagram comment ticket, then you'll be taken to a new Instagram Direct message ticket, where you will continue the rest of the conversation.

You can send only one Direct message in that thread until the customer replies to you. This is one of Meta's API limitations, in DM tickets that you have initiated, the customer needs to respond first so your messages are not perceived as spam.  If you do need to follow up with the customer with the second message, the only way would be directly from Instagram. When the customer replies, you will be able to continue the correspondence via Gorgias, even by sending multiple subsequent messages.

The new ticket will be populated with a Responded via Messenger to Comment event, which will include the comment you were responding to and a link to the Instagram comment ticket where you initiated the conversation. It will also include the Instagram Direct message response from the previous step.


The rest of the conversation will take place on the new Instagram Direct message ticket and will function the same as any other Instagram Direct message ticket.
If the ticket gets pulled in Gorgias as undefined, this is most likely because reason it was marked as spam in Instagram.


History imports

The first time a customer reaches out to you via Instagram messaging in Gorgias, the ticket will be pre-populated with their latest message and a historical import of the latest 50 messages sent. 

We support GIF and audio DMs only when these are received via Webhooks. If it's a real-time message, you will be able to see the GIF/ audio DM in Gorgias. However, if the GIF is a history import the following error will appear Media not yet supported by the Instagram Messaging API.



Limitations

  • Replies are allowed within 7 days of the creation date of the message.
  • Direct messages from one person go into the same thread. After setting a customer on a ticket their next DM will open a brand new ticket with the same Instagram username and without the customer data. You would have to merge the customer instead of setting them, after doing so the DMs will go into one thread.
  • If your Instagram direct message has more than 1000 characters it'll not be sent. This is a current Instagram limitation.
  • It's not possible to repost Instagram posts or stories from Gorgias.
  • We do not support the following types of DM content:
    • Real-time DMs:
      Reels
      IGTV
      Guides
      Products
    • History import DMs:
      GIF
      Audio
      Reels
      IGTV
      Guides
      Products
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