Currently, there are more than 1.3 billion Facebook users and this provides a bigger opportunity for businesses to reach their consumers. Facebook allows businesses to converse with their consumers using Facebook Messenger.

There are several advantages for using Facebook Messenger -

• Customer service is readily available for the consumers.
• Easily identifies leads.
• Your business can reach your consumers.

Prerequisites of a Facebook Messenger Bot

The following are pre-requisites for having a Facebook Messenger Bot -

• A Facebook page is the page where the bot will be deployed.
• An Admin for the page. Ideally, the owner of the page should be the admin too.

Setting up a Facebook account for a bot

Facebook Developer account enables users to create third-party applications which access Facebook's data. To create a Developer Account, navigate to https://developers.facebook.com

Creating new Developer Account

If you have never used a Developer Account, then the first login from the Facebook account and click on Get Started as shown below:

You will be prompted with 3 questions, as shown -

Once you have provided the primary email and description, click on Complete Registration.

If you already have an account, you can log in and click on MyApps to get started.

Step 1: Creating an App

Step 1a: Click on the Create App button to create a new App.

Step 1b: Select Manage Business Integrations, and click on Continue.

Step 1c: Create an App by adding App Display Name, your Email id and App Purpose.

You can add different products as per your requirement but here we need Messenger. Open the created App and click on Messenger’s Setup button as shown below:

Step 2: Add an App Admin

Step 2a: Get FB_id/username of Admin Account who manages their Facebook page

Step 2b: Add the user as admin using FB_id/username

Click on the Roles option on the right sidebar. Upon clicking Add Administrators, paste the FD_id/username and click on Submit button.

Once Admin has been added, we will now see the configurations an Admin will have to do. You can read this article to follow the steps and finish configuring your bot with Facebook.