Connect Telegram, WhatsApp, Slack or email

Your assistant can be reached on the apps you already use, and can bring its questions and alerts to you there. This guide connects one of the four services with a guided setup, which takes a few minutes with your assistant doing most of the work.

Before you start

You need an account on the service. Your assistant can prepare everything and explain each step, but it cannot sign in as you.

Telegram needs nothing beyond the app: you create a bot inside it as part of the setup.

WhatsApp links your personal account by scanning a code, allows four linked devices and three fresh link attempts an hour, and was never designed for this use. It works, but Telegram is the better choice for an app you mean to rely on.

Slack needs a workspace you are allowed to add an app to. If yours requires an admin to approve new apps, ask for that first.

Email needs the mailbox's sign-in details, and for most providers an app password rather than your everyday one, from that provider's security settings. A Microsoft 365 work or school mailbox is the exception: it usually refuses app passwords and signs in the modern way instead, which needs someone with admin access to your Microsoft 365 to register Player One once.

Connect it

Say which one you want, and your assistant runs the setup in the conversation.

"Connect Telegram." / "Set up WhatsApp on this number." / "Connect my Slack workspace." / "Connect my work email."

1. Your assistant asks which account this is and who is allowed to message it, then prepares everything it can on its side.
2. Do the one step only you can do. It says plainly when you reach it: scanning a code, signing in, approving an app, or fetching a password from the service's own site.
3. Put what it asked for into the secure field it opens, never into the conversation itself. If a password does end up there, say so, and it can be replaced.
4. Send your assistant a message from the app and wait for the reply. That is the real test: a connection can look healthy while nothing is flowing.
5. Tell it where your questions and alerts should reach you from now on: "send urgent alerts to Telegram as well". It adds the destination and sends you a real notification to prove the path.

The same setup starts from the page. Admin > Messaging (/admin/channels) has a card per service, showing Connected, Idle, Error or Not set up, and Set up on a card hands the job to your assistant in the same way. That page is also where you check the result: the card should read Connected, with a row for the account you added, Refresh re-checks every card, and Test on a connected card sends a real message (email has none). Alert routing is shown on Admin > Alerts (/admin/alerts): the Channels tab lists where you can be reached, the Routing tab which app each of Urgent, Normal and Quiet goes to, and Test sends yourself a real notification.

Email is a full connection in both directions, but it is not one of the destinations alerts can go to, so step 5 does not apply to it.

Telegram

1. In Telegram, open BotFather and press Open beside the message box. Choose Create a New Bot and give it a name and a username.
2. Copy the token BotFather shows you and paste it into the secure field your assistant opens.
3. Message your new bot once so your assistant can pick up your Telegram id and let you through.
4. Set the bot's picture and description back in BotFather. They belong to Telegram rather than Player One, and are the first thing anyone messaging it sees.

WhatsApp

1. Give your assistant the number allowed to message it. This comes first, because changing it later breaks a link in progress.
2. Scan the code it shows you: in WhatsApp, open Settings, then Linked Devices, then Link a Device.
3. Keep WhatsApp open and wait. An account with years of history can sit on Linking for minutes, and interrupting it guarantees a broken link.
4. Send a message to your own number to finish. It arrives in your notes to yourself and raises no notification, so judge it by whether your assistant reacts.

Slack

1. Your assistant hands you the app definition to build from. On Slack's app page, create an app from a manifest, paste it in, and pick the workspace. Slack will not let you change that afterwards.
2. Create and install the app, then complete Slack's approval screen.
3. Copy the two credentials Slack shows you into the secure form your assistant opens.
4. Invite the app to any channel it should read, including private ones, then send it a direct message to check.

Email

1. Tell your assistant which email this is: Gmail, Fastmail, iCloud, Outlook, Microsoft 365, Proton or something else.
2. Create an app password on that provider's security page, using the link your assistant gives you.
3. Put the address and the app password into the secure form.
4. Send yourself a message from another address to check, and name anyone else whose mail should reach your assistant.

For a Microsoft 365 work or school mailbox, steps 2 and 3 are different. Your assistant gives your Microsoft 365 administrator the exact steps to register Player One as an app, which they do once. You then put the app's details into the secure form, open the link your assistant shows, sign in with the mailbox and approve. The chat says when the mailbox is connected.

Other channels

Discord and others are supported too, but with no guided setup, so expect question and answer with your assistant rather than a walkthrough.

If something goes wrong

The card shows Error. Ask your assistant to repair the connection, or press Repair on the card. Either restarts the guided setup at the part that broke, usually a credential the service has rotated or an approval that has lapsed.

Messages do not arrive. Nearly always the sender is not allowed yet. A new connection is closed by default and open only to the addresses, numbers or accounts you named, which stops a stranger driving your assistant, so ask it to add whoever is missing. On Slack, check the app has been invited to the channel. On Telegram, a bot in a group sees only messages that mention it, unless you change that in BotFather and then remove and re-add it.

You want to start again. Ask your assistant to disconnect that account and set it up afresh, or press Disconnect on the account's row and then Set up. Only that account is affected, so a second mailbox or workspace carries on. With WhatsApp, clear the old entry from Linked Devices on your phone too.

Where next

Channels and communication explains what a connection is and how a reply on your phone unblocks work that was waiting; Talk to it shows how each app's manners differ.

Stay in control covers the approvals behind most of these questions, and Schedule something the work that runs while you are away. A morning briefing that talks to you puts the two together.