WhatsApp

Overview

Link your WhatsApp and your conversations with leads appear on each lead, and you can reply from the lead page. It works with personal WhatsApp and WhatsApp Business. Each person links their own number, once, from Settings › Me › Inboxes, under Messaging.

Chats with anyone who is not one of your leads never enter Fondaro.

Link your WhatsApp

1. Open Settings › Me › Inboxes and select Connect WhatsApp.
2. Check the line under Price. It reads Included with your plan or shows the monthly price.
3. Select Connect. Fondaro opens a short window with a code.
4. On your phone, open WhatsApp, go to Settings > Linked devices and select Link a device, then scan the code. This is the same way you link WhatsApp Web.
5. On a phone that cannot scan its own screen, choose Link with phone number instead in WhatsApp and type the code the window shows.
6. You come back to the same page. It reads Connecting for a few seconds, then shows your number as connected.

Keep your phone online now and then. If it stays offline for a long time, WhatsApp ends the link and the page asks you to Reconnect.

A plain word about WhatsApp's rules

WhatsApp does not officially support linked business tools, and heavy or automated use can get a number restricted. Fondaro is built to keep your use looking like you, because it is you:

• You send every message. Ask can draft a message; you read it and press Send. Nothing is sent on a schedule, in bulk or in a sequence.
• One person at a time. No broadcasts and no groups from Fondaro.
• Paced. Messages from one number go out at least 15 seconds apart. If you send faster, the next one waits its turn on the timeline with a clock and the time it goes out.
• New chats are limited. A new chat is the first message to someone who has never written to your number. None in the first 24 hours after you link or relink, then 3 a day for the first week, then 20 a day. Replies are never limited. When a new chat has to wait, the composer says when new chats open again and keeps your draft.

If WhatsApp restricts your number, sending stops, the setup page and the composer say so, and Reconnect starts again from the linking step.

Messaging a lead

When you have WhatsApp linked and a lead's phone number is on WhatsApp, the lead page shows a WhatsApp segment beside Email. It opens a composer with the lead's number as To and your own number as From. Type your message and select Send, or press Cmd+Enter (Ctrl+Enter on Windows). You can attach up to 3 PDFs from your documents, or insert a brochure or home link.

The message shows on the timeline straight away. A quiet mark tells you how it went: a clock while it waits, one tick when sent, two ticks when delivered, and Read with when it was read.

What appears on the lead

• Messages between you and the lead, whether you wrote them in Fondaro or on your phone.
• Voice notes, with a written transcript for notes up to 2 minutes. Longer notes keep the audio only.
• Photos and files the lead sends. Select the save button beside a PDF to add it to your documents and to this lead.
• A missed WhatsApp call from the lead, with a task to call them back.

What Fondaro keeps

Fondaro keeps your conversations with leads and new enquiries about a home. A first message from someone who is not a lead yet is kept for up to 14 days while you decide whether they become one. Everything else on your WhatsApp is never stored.

Price

WhatsApp counts as one connected inbox. Your plan includes as many connected inboxes as it has people, shared across your agency; each further one is billed monthly with your usage. See Billing.

Disconnect

Select Disconnect on the WhatsApp page. Fondaro stops sending and receiving through your number, and the conversations already on your leads stay. You can also remove Fondaro from Settings > Linked devices on your phone.