SilentForms

Telegram

Receive every form submission as a Telegram message from your own bot, in a private chat, group or channel.

Get every submission as a Telegram message, in a private chat with your own bot, in a group or in a channel. SilentForms sends it through the Telegram Bot API with a bot you create, so messages come from your bot and nobody else's.

1. Create a bot#

  1. In Telegram, open a chat with @BotFather and send /newbot.
  2. Choose a name and a username ending in bot.
  3. BotFather replies with a token like 123456789:AA…. Keep it secret: it controls the bot.

2. Find the chat id#

The chat id says where messages go.

  • A private chat with you: send your bot any message first (bots cannot start conversations).
  • A group: add the bot to the group and send a message in it.
  • A channel: add the bot as an administrator of the channel. You can use the channel's @username as the chat id.

Then open this address in a browser, with your token in place of TOKEN:

https://api.telegram.org/botTOKEN/getUpdates

Look for "chat":{"id":… in the reply. Private chats have a positive number; groups and channels have a negative one, usually starting with -100.

3. Connect it to your form#

  1. Sign in and open the form.
  2. Under Slack, Discord and Telegram, open Add Telegram, enter the bot token and the chat id, and choose Connect Telegram.
  3. Choose Send test.

The token is stored encrypted and never shown again. The dashboard lists the connection by its chat id.

What a message looks like#

New submission to Contact form

name: Jane
email: [email protected]
message: Hello!

Messages are sent as plain text, so nothing a visitor types is interpreted as formatting or a link preview trick. Long values are shortened to 500 characters.

When a message fails#

Failed messages are retried after 1 minute, 5 minutes, 30 minutes, 2 hours and 12 hours. If Telegram says the request itself is wrong, for example "chat not found" or "bot was kicked", SilentForms stops retrying, and the submission in the dashboard shows Telegram's reason. Fix the chat or the bot's membership, then use Retry now.

Next steps#