Telegram

Telegram delivery is personal DMs from a workspace bot — same shape as Slack (one bot token, per-rule routing to individual users). Group chats are supported too (a chat ID can be a group ID).

1. Create the bot

1. Open Telegram, find @BotFather.
2. /newbot, follow prompts. Name (display, mutable), username (immutable, must end with bot).
3. BotFather hands you a token like 1234567890:AAEexamplexamplexamplexamplexample.

2. Configure

Add to appsettings.secrets.yaml (gitignored, sits next to appsettings.yaml in the Preesta install — alongside any Smtp: / Slack: sections):

Telegram:
  botToken: "1234567890:AAEexamplexamplexamplexamplexample"

3. Find user/chat IDs

Each person who wants Preesta DMs has to "open the bot" first — Telegram doesn't allow bots to message users who haven't initiated contact. Have each user:

1. Click the bot's t.me/<bot_username> link or search the bot name in Telegram.
2. Hit Start.

Their numeric user ID is the chat ID. To discover it:

curl https://api.telegram.org/bot<TOKEN>/getUpdates

In the response, result[].message.from.id is the user's chat ID. (Add the bot to a group and the same call returns the group's negative-prefixed chat ID under result[].message.chat.id.)

4. Use in rules

Two orthogonal mechanisms — combine as needed.

Per-rule explicit chat IDs (always-on, one-for-all):

- tracker: jira
  filter: "..."
  notify:
    subject: "Daily digest"
    mailTo: assignee
    telegramChatId: "12345678,987654321"

Every fire of this rule DMs both chat IDs the same digest.

Workspace-level email→chatId map (per-recipient fan-out — recommended):

# rules.yaml — alongside the `rules:` list
telegramUsers:
  alice@example.com: "12345678"
  bob@example.com:   "987654321"

rules:
  - tracker: jira
    filter: "..."
    notify:
      subject: "Daily digest"
      mailTo: assignee   # ← marker resolves to email; map turns email into chat ID

Each distinct assignee email gets its own DM with its own slice. See Routing model for the full mechanics.

Message format

Telegram-compatible HTML (<b>, <i>, <a>, <code>, <pre> — same set Telegram's bot API accepts). Each digest is one message; the same plain-text body that goes into the email body is reused. Truncated cleanly if a single message would exceed Telegram's 4096-char limit (rare for normal digests).

Limits

• 4096 chars per message
• 30 messages/second per bot, 1 message/sec to the same chat — Preesta paces sends to stay inside those windows.
• Bots can't initiate conversations with users — recipient has to /start the bot first.

Troubleshooting

• Forbidden: bot was blocked by the user — recipient blocked the bot. They have to unblock via the chat menu.
• Forbidden: bot can't initiate conversation with a user — recipient never /start-ed. They need to open the bot URL and hit Start.
• HTML parse errors — Telegram is strict about HTML. If a custom field rendering injects raw < or & it can fail; the formatter escapes everything, but if you see HTML errors in the log, file an issue with the failing payload.