Sender Actions

This guide explains how to display your actions in a conversation to let message recipients know that you have seen and are processing their message.

Display a Sender Action

Typing Indicator

To display the typing_on or typing_off actions in the for a sender in the conversation, send a POST request to the /me/messages endpoint with the sender_action parameter set to typing_on or typing_off.

For the best conversational experience, send the typing_on indicator when your bot receives a message it will respond to. Do not allow an unnatural amount of time (too long or too short) to pass between typing_on and typing_off sender actions. Ideally, the user should feel that a real person was typing the message in the elapsed time.

curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{
  "recipient":{
    "id":"<IGSID>"
  },
  "sender_action":"typing_on"
}' "https://graph.facebook.com/VERSION/me/messages?access_token=INSTAGRAM_ACCESS_TOKEN"

Mark messages as seen

To send the mark_seen indicator to the most recent message, send a POST request to the /me/messages endpoint with the sender_action parameter set to mark_seen.

For the best conversational experience, send the mark_seen indicator when your bot receives a message so that the user does not feel ignored.

curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{
  "recipient":{
    "id":"<IGSID>"
  },
  "sender_action":"typing_on"
}' "https://graph.facebook.com/VERSION/me/messages?access_token=INSTAGRAM_ACCESS_TOKEN"

Limitations

• Requests to display sender actions for typing indicators and mark_seen indicators should only include the sender_action parameter and the recipient object. All other Send API properties, such as text and templates, should be sent in a separate request.
• The recipient must be signed in for sender actions to be displayed.