Facebook Messenger is a powerful tool that allows businesses to connect directly with their customers through real-time messaging. By connecting your Facebook Page’s Messenger with SleekFlow, you can manage and respond to customer inquiries efficiently from a unified platform.

You can also use Facebook Messenger Utility Messages to re-engage contacts after the 24-hour standard messaging window has closed, using approved, non-promotional Utility templates.

Starting a conversation

On Facebook Messenger, businesses can respond to customer messages within a 24-hour messaging window. This window starts when a customer sends a message to your Facebook Page and resets each time the customer replies.  

Within this 24-hour period, you can send free-form responses to continue the conversation.

If a customer comments on your Facebook Page’s post or story, you can also send a private reply to initiate a conversation. Once the customer responds, a new 24-hour messaging window begins.

After the 24-hour window closes, you can no longer send free-form messages. To re-engage a Messenger contact outside this window, use an approved Facebook Messenger Utility template.
Utility templates are for structured, non-promotional messages, such as order updates, shipping notifications, appointment reminders, or account-related messages. They are not intended for marketing or promotional content.

Using Facebook Messenger Utility message template

Facebook Messenger Utility templates allow your team to re-engage Messenger contacts after the 24-hour standard messaging window has closed.

Meta has deprecated Facebook Messenger Message Tags, including the Human Agent tag that previously extended the response window to 7 days. To stay compliant with Meta’s messaging policy, you should use approved Utility templates for structured, non-promotional re-engagement messages, such as order updates, shipping notifications, appointment reminders, or account-related notifications.  

Before using Facebook Messenger Utility templates

Before you use Facebook Messenger Utility templates, make sure:

• Your workspace has at least one connected Facebook Messenger Page
• The connected Facebook Page has Utility template access
• If template access is missing, an admin may need to reconnect the Facebook Page from the web app
• Utility templates have been synced from Meta or created in SleekFlow and submitted for review
• Only templates with Approved status are used for sending
• Utility Messages are only used for approved, non-promotional use cases

If you are using Facebook Messenger message templates for the first time on your connected Facebook page, Admin of the Facebook page will be required to re-authenticate access to this feature on Facebook. To do so, follow the steps:

1. Click on the icon on the left navigation bar to go to the Channels page
2. Select “Facebook Messenger” on the left sided panel
3. You will find a list of account in the Facebook pages connected to your SleekFlow account
4. Locate the Facebook page you need to re-authenticate on the list
5. Click on the “Re-authenticate to grant access” button under the Facebook page
   
6. You will be redirected to the “Connect Messenger” page
   
7. Click “Connect” to continue granting access on Facebook

Accessing Facebook Messenger Utility templates

You can follow the steps below to access the “Facebook Messenger template page”:

1. Click on the  icon on the left sided navigation bar to go to the Channels page
2. Click “Facebook Messenger” on the left-sided panel
3. Click on the “Template” tab
   
4. You will be redirected to the “Facebook Messenger template page”

In this page, you can:

• Create Facebook Messenger Utility templates
• Sync existing Utility templates from a connected Facebook page
• Manage Facebook Messenger Utility templates

Create Facebook Messenger Utility templates

You can create Facebook Messenger Utility templates in SleekFlow and submit them for review. Once approved, these templates can be used to send structured, non-promotional messages after the 24-hour Messenger messaging window has closed.

You can follow the steps below to create Facebook Messenger Utility templates:

1. In the “Facebook Messenger template page”, click “Create template” on the top right corner
2. You will be redirected to the “Create template” page. Fill in the following information:
   [Screenshot of the Create template page] 
   1. Facebook page: Select the Facebook Page this template belongs to
   2. Template type: Select the template format. Currently, only “Generic Template” is supported.
   3. Template name: Enter an internal name for the template. This name is not shown to end users. Use a clear name that helps your team identify the template, such as order_update or appointment_reminder.
   4. Title: Enter the main title of the Messenger card. This field is required and can contain up to 80 characters.
   5. Insert a recipient variable (Optional): Click this option under the “Title” field to personalize the title with recipient information.
   6. Subtitle: Enter supporting text for the Messenger card. This field is optional and can contain up to 80 characters.
   7. Insert a recipient variable: Click this option under the “Subtitle” field to personalize the subtitle with recipient information.
3. Review the “Messenger preview” on the right side of the page. The preview updates as you configure the template, so you can check how the template may appear to the recipient.
4. Click “Submit template” to submit the template for review.

You can return to the “Facebook Messenger template page” to check the template status. Only templates with “Approved” status can be sent from Inbox, Broadcast, Flow Builder, or Mobile Inbox.

Manage Facebook Messenger Utility templates

You can view and manage your Facebook Messenger Utility templates from the Templates tab in your Facebook Messenger channel settings.

To manage Facebook Messenger templates:

1. Click on the  icon on the left sided navigation bar to go to the Channels page
2. Click “Facebook Messenger” on the left-sided panel
3. Click on the “Template” tab
4. Use the Facebook Page dropdown to select the Facebook Page you want to manage templates for. The template list only shows templates associated with the selected Facebook Page.
5. Once you have selected a Facebook page, you will find the following information:
   1. Name: The internal template name
   2. Page: The Facebook Page the template belongs to
   3. Status: The template review status
   4. Category: The template category, such as UTILITY
   5. Bookmark: Whether the template is bookmarked for easier access
   6. Actions: Additional actions available for the template

Duplicate a Facebook Messenger template

You can duplicate an existing template when you want to create a similar template without starting from scratch.

This is useful when you want to reuse the same structure, then update details such as the template name, title, subtitle, or variables.

To duplicate a template:

1.  In the “Facebook Messenger template page”, find the template you want to duplicate.
2. Click the  to open the Action menu
3. Select “Duplicate”.
4. Review and update the duplicated template.
5. Click “Submit template” to submit the new template for review.

Delete a Facebook Messenger template

You can delete a template that your team no longer needs.

To delete a template:

1.  In the “Facebook Messenger template page”, find the template you want to delete.
2. Click the  to open the Action menu
3. Select “Delete”.
4. Confirm the deletion.

Sync existing Utility templates from a connected Facebook page

If you have existing Utility templates created in Meta, you can sync them into SleekFlow from the Templates tab. Once synced, approved templates can be used in Inbox, Broadcast, Flow Builder, or Mobile Inbox.

To sync existing Utility templates:

1. Click on the  icon on the left sided navigation bar to go to the Channels page
2. Click “Facebook Messenger” on the left-sided panel
3. Click on the “Template” tab
4. Use the Facebook Page dropdown to select the connected Facebook Page you want to sync templates from.
5. Click “Refresh” on the top right corner

SleekFlow will fetch the latest Utility templates from the selected Facebook Page and update the template list.

After syncing, you can review each template’s status in the “Status” column.

• Approved: The template is ready to use
• Pending Review: The template is still under review
• Rejected: The template was not approved and cannot be sent

Supported message type in SleekFlow's Inbox

1. Text

You can compose and send text messages directly.  You can input up to 2,000 characters per text message. 

2. Voice message 

3. Image

4. Video

Unsupported message types in SleekFlow Facebook Messenger channels

Certain message types are not supported when using SleekFlow with Facebook Messenger:

• Sending voice messages
• Sending stickers
• Reacting to messages
• Sending PDFs
• Sending recorded videos