How to set starting options in facebook messenger

Question

Is it possible to set starting options in facebook messenger for pages like example bellow: example of expected result

I figured that similar could be achieved by using messenger BOT with 'start button', multiple BOT replies with 'quick reply' buttons and passing conversation to live chat in required cases.

The problem with this is that after user clicks 'get started' button BOT publish text replay 'Get started' which is not desired.

I wonder if there is an build-in setting to achieve this? If not, how would one solve it?

EDIT: It seems to me, it is not possible to build something like that neither with facebook quick reply neither with templates/buttons

EDIT 2: I also tried doing this in Facebook's page settings with no result. It seems it doesn't have anything to do with Facebook's 'quick replies'

Answer 1

You can create a persistent menu to achieve this. Here are few video tutorials I created to help you with Facebook integration and sending rich messages in facebook messenger through Dialogflow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ4HoYxoKl8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JC9Y-AmcL6A

Answer 2

First of all there is no way to set those options from facebook platform itself. Those questions are generated by facebook to give user a head start to a conversation and those are generated based on the type of page you are created. To see the option go to

Your Page's Settings-> Messaging -> General Settings

It is ideal that you will configure the 'Get Started' to initiate conversation with your bot and then show users a bunch of options using various templates like quick replies, carousel, list etc. By this way you have full control over your templates and expected answers.

But then again if you want to use those generated options from facebook then you can look for those option's text in the delivered json to your configured web hook. Here is a sample json:

{"object":"page","entry":[{"id":"","time":1519980744192,"messaging":[{"sender":{"id":""},"recipient":{"id":""},"timestamp":1519980743903,"message":{"mid":"","seq":1,"text":"Could you give me a call? I'd like to speak to someone."}}]}]}

Look at the 'text' attribute. The text is from after clicking one of those options. But again this is not ideal as the options can get changed anytime by facebook's algorithm.

My suggestion is to use 'Get Started' button and then send a list to the user.

Answer 3

The screenshot you posted shows a features that is currently being tested for Pages, so it is not available to every Page. There is no built-in way to do this, other than sending quick replies in response to the get started postback, messaging_optins or messaging_referrals events.