The official number, with the team on it.
Cloud API is the path Meta opens for a CRM. The number is yours. The shop phone stops being the one people borrow.
Conext does not hang off WhatsApp Web or the phone app. It links WhatsApp Business to your Meta account. If you leave one day, you take the number with you.
Why the official path.
Tools that clone the session or read the phone app work until Meta detects them. A banned number is not an argument with the CRM: it is gone. Cloud API is the door Meta opens for automation, with a token from the business account and a webhook they sign.
A number on the API cannot be on the WhatsApp phone app at the same time. If you still answer by hand and do not want to cut that yet, start with a separate number and move the main one when you are ready.
Several people, one number.
The team signs in each with their own user. AI agents attend in the same thread. Nobody borrows the till phone. The “Mine” and “Unassigned” folders come from who owns each conversation, not from who holds the device.
Meta bills conversations straight to your account at their rate. conext does not add a margin. What you pay here is the software: the inbox, the agents, the catalog.
What comes in, and what does not yet.
Text messages are processed today. Sent, delivered, read, and failed receipts update the bubble. Outbound attachments are uploaded to Graph and copied in the CRM, because Meta deletes theirs after 30 days. Inbound ones are not downloaded yet: the thread shows the text; a photo they send does not open yet.
Past 24 hours from the customer’s last message, Meta rejects free text. That is when approved templates from your WABA go out. They live in Meta, not in a copy of ours: approval status is asked of Graph, not guessed.
In practice
- 1
Open Channels
Settings has the WhatsApp card. Meta’s embedded signup links the number to your account, not ours.
- 2
The CRM subscribes
The token (encrypted) and the phone_number_id are stored. From then on, events for that number arrive at Conext.
- 3
Send a test
A “hello” to the connected number should show up in the inbox. If it does not, Meta’s signup did not finish or the app is not subscribed to the webhook.
The API is not a badge. It is the difference between a CRM Meta lets run and a cloned session that one day stops existing.
Want to see it with your own threads?
Essential includes one channel, 500 AI conversations per month, and one active agent.