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Native Features

After successfully connecting a bot or account to Hotline, customer communication happens through the Telegram app interface. The system uses native topic group capabilities, providing the team with a convenient and familiar interface for communication.

Basic Operating Principle

By default, Hotline automatically creates topics when receiving incoming messages from new users and sends them a welcome message from the WELCOME parameter.

Default behavior:

  • User writes to the bot or account (frontend of the system)
  • Hotline bot creates a topic in the backend group and forwards user messages there
  • All operators see these messages and can respond to customers
  • Reply from the topic is sent to the user on behalf of the connected bot or account

Behavior Configuration

The system behavior described above can be changed through connection parameters to fit your use case. Learn more about different system usage scenarios in the Cases section.

Start parameter for bots

If you're connecting a bot and the user launched your bot with a start parameter (for example, to track UTM tags), it will be displayed in the first message of the topic.

Example message when bot is launched via link https://t.me/YourTelegramTestBot?start=ads_creative2026
/start ads_creative2026

Video Overview

Sending Messages

Hotline supports virtually all Telegram message types — use them for fast, convenient, vibrant, and engaging communication with customers!

  • Formatted Text

    Bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, spoilers, links, monospace text.

  • Stickers and Emoji

    Don't be boring, use your favorite or corporate stickers and emojis!

  • Voice and Audio

    Voice messages for quick convenient communication (can be transcribed to text), as well as audio files.

  • Video and Video Notes

    Send videos of any size or video notes, everything works like in regular chats.

  • Files, Media and Albums

    Documents, photos, screenshots and media albums, as attachments with desired compression level or from clipboard.

  • Additional Types

    Locations, contacts, and even messages with buttons from bots.

Additional Capabilities

  • Scheduled messages with timer
  • Reply to any message in the topic
  • Preserving notify parameter (silent notifications)
  • Forwarding messages (forward) without preserving source information

Send to customer only by explicit reply

By default, any message from operators in the topic is sent to the user, but you can enable REPLY_ONLY mode — then only explicit replies (reply) will be sent. Useful when mandatory approval of responses before sending within the team is required.

Markdown Formatting

The system uses Markdown v2 formatting for messages, so be careful with special characters — they can sometimes affect message formatting.

Unsupported Message Types

There are message types that are not yet supported by Hotline:

  • Message reactions (not transmitted)
  • Read status (not transmitted)
  • Quotes inside messages (will cause error)
  • Spoilers for media files (will cause error)
  • Some animated emoji (simplified to basic version)
  • Rare types of special messages (will cause error)

Editing Messages

Operators can edit their outgoing messages like in a regular chat — changes are applied instantly and synchronized with the user's dialog.

Deleting Messages

Operators:

  • Can delete their own outgoing messages

Group administrators:

  • Can delete messages from other operators
  • Can delete incoming messages from users (sent through the bot)
  • Deletion is applied in the user's dialog as well

Be Careful with Administrator Rights!

When deleting messages in Telegram, dangerous options appear like "Delete all messages from this bot". You can accidentally delete the entire incoming message history!

Make sure your administrators are aware of the behavior of such options.

Synchronization Features

  • Editing works instantly
  • Deletion is applied upon receiving the first update from the group (new incoming/outgoing message or comment)

Managing Topics

Hotline fully utilizes Telegram topic group capabilities for organizing convenient and efficient work.

General Topic

The system General topic is automatically created in each group and used by Hotline for important notifications and administrative commands.

Don't use General for communication

It's better to leave the General topic only for Hotline system notifications so you don't miss important information.

Automatic Hotline Topics

Contain in the name:

  • Status square (🟪 🟨 ⬛)
  • Dialog type icon:
    • 👤 — private dialogs (private)
    • 🤖 — dialogs with bots (bot)
    • 🔐 — secret chats (secret)
    • 👥 — groups (group, supergroup)
    • 📢 — channels (channel)
    • 📂 — topics (topic)
  • User name or chat title

Allowed actions with topics:

  • Renaming (new topic name will be preserved)
  • Deletion (deleted topics are recreated on new incoming message, but message history is lost)
  • Closing (by /close command or manually)
  • Setting custom icons

Custom Topics

Besides automatic Hotline topics, you can create your own topics for various purposes and pin them at the top of the list.

Examples of such topics:

  • Internal team chat: Team communication, task discussions, meetings.

  • Task lists: Task tracking (see native checklists), planning, notes.

  • Data storage/Knowledge base: Important links, instructions, details, response rules.

  • Team notifications: Internal feed of event messages or announcements from admins.

Additional Features

  • Pins

    Pin topics at the top of the group list, important messages at the top of the topic, groups at the top of Telegram folders.

  • Powerful text search by topic names, message text or #hashtags.

  • Notifications

    Flexible notification settings for groups or individual topics (can set custom sounds for each group).

  • Automatic Translation

    Translate messages from any language via context menu.

  • Voice Recognition

    Transcription of voice or video messages (requires Telegram Premium subscription).

  • Get links to topics or individual messages for internal team communication.

Topic Structure

Topics cannot contain other nested topics — it's a flat one-level structure.