📄 Message templates

The Templates section in the side menu is your library of ready-made messages. Save a text once (a greeting, a price list, your bank details, an answer to a common question) and from then on send it to a chat in one click, without typing it again.

The page has two tabs:

Chat templates: your own quick replies. They work in every channel (WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram, OLX and others).
HSM (WABA): official WhatsApp Business API templates approved by Meta. Available only when a WABA channel is connected.

🔍 How the two types differ

Parameter	Chat templates	HSM (WABA)
Who creates them	You, instantly	You create them, then Meta reviews them
Review	Not required	Required (Meta checks them)
Where they work	In every channel	In WABA channels only
When you can send them	Any time (within an open conversation)	Including as the very first message to a cold number
Purpose	Speed up manual replies	Official notifications and first contact

The key point: to message a customer first on WhatsApp (when they have not written to you yet, or more than 24 hours have passed), you need an HSM template. Regular chat templates are simply saved texts for replies inside a conversation.

💬 The Chat templates tab

This is where your personal saved texts live. You can create as many as you like and use them right away.

How to create a chat template

Open Templates in the side menu
On the Chat templates tab click + Add template
Fill in the fields:
- Template name: this is how you will find the template in a chat (for example: Greeting, Price list, Bank details)
- Message text: the text itself, up to 4096 characters. You can add emoji and links, use the formatting bar, and undo or redo your edits (↶ / ↷)
If you need to, attach a file (photo, video or document), up to 15 MB
On the right there is a WhatsApp preview: you can see exactly how the message will look to your customer
Click Create template

Managing templates

All templates are shown as cards. Hover over a card:

✏️ Pencil: edit the template
🗑️ Bin: delete it (with confirmation)

Tip: chat templates work in any channel: WhatsApp (QR), WABA, Telegram, Instagram, OLX and others.

🟢 The HSM (WABA) tab

HSM templates are official WhatsApp Business API templates. Meta reviews and approves them. They are what lets you message a customer first (a notification, a reminder, a promotion), even if they have not replied for a long time.

If you have no WABA channel

If you have no WhatsApp Business API channel connected, the tab will show No WABA channels along with an offer to connect one. HSM templates are available for WABA only.

Working with the list

WABA channel: if you have several channels, pick the one you need from the list at the top
Refresh 🔄: pull the current template statuses
Create ➕: open the form for a new HSM template and submit it to Meta for review

Template categories

Every HSM template has a category. You choose it when creating the template, and it affects both the sending price and how WhatsApp treats delivery of the message:

Category	What it is for	Examples
UTILITY (service)	A specific arrangement or action involving the customer: confirmations, reminders, order statuses	"A reminder about your appointment…", "Your order has been handed to the courier", "You asked us to remind you about the payment…"
MARKETING (promotional)	Promotion and sales: offers, discounts, first contact with a new customer	"20% off until the end of the week", "We have a new arrival!"
AUTHENTICATION (verification code)	One-time codes for logging in and confirming actions	"Your code: 1234"

Important: Meta checks the category during review. If the text looks like a sales pitch, the template may be moved to MARKETING automatically, even if you chose UTILITY. And the other way round: an honest service text (a reminder the customer asked for themselves) passes as UTILITY without trouble.

Review statuses

Every template has a status. It is Meta's decision after the review:

Status	What it means
Approved	The template has been reviewed and is ready to send
In review	Meta is still checking the template
Rejected	Meta rejected the template (see the reason)
Disabled / Paused	The template is temporarily unavailable for sending
Appealed	An appeal against Meta's decision has been submitted

Approved templates also show a quality rating (★ High / Medium / Low), Meta's assessment based on how customers react to your messages.

If a template is rejected

For a rejected template you will see Meta's reason for the refusal. Next to it there is a Recreate button: it opens the creation form with the old template's fields already filled in. Fix what Meta flagged and submit it for review again.

Common reasons for rejection:

A variable at the very start or the very end of the text. A template cannot begin or end with the variable {{1}}: there must be plain text before and after it. For example, instead of "…of your order {{1}}." write "…of your order {{1}}. Is everything still on?"
No sample value for a variable: when creating the template, give a realistic example (for example, "22 July"), with no extra characters.
Text that is too generic or too promotional for the UTILITY category: Meta will either reject the template or move it to MARKETING.
Prohibited topics: WhatsApp rules do not allow promoting certain goods and services.

Important: recreating a template does not delete the old one automatically. Delete it by hand once the new one has passed review.

Deleting an HSM template

The 🗑️ button deletes the template from Meta: this cannot be undone. If you delete an approved template, you can no longer send it, and a replacement will have to go through review again.

🚫 The template is approved and sent, but says "Not delivered"

Sometimes everything is done right. The template is approved, the message went out, but a note appears under it:

Not delivered. WhatsApp limited delivery of this message under Meta's rules…

This is not a service error and not a ban on your number. It is how WhatsApp protects people from an overload of ads: the system limits how many marketing templates a person can receive over a short period from all businesses combined. If the recipient rarely replies to promotional messages or has already received several from other businesses, the next MARKETING template simply is not delivered to them.

What to do

🕐 Do not resend the template straight away: back-to-back attempts will be blocked in exactly the same way. Wait at least 24 hours.
✅ Try a UTILITY template. The limit applies to MARKETING templates only. If your message is service-related in nature (a reminder, a confirmation, an order status, an arrangement with the customer), create a template in the UTILITY category and it will be delivered without this restriction.
💬 Wait for the customer to write to you: as soon as they do, the 24-hour window opens and you can chat with ordinary messages, no templates at all.
📞 If the message is urgent, reach the customer another way (a call or an SMS).

Good news: you are not charged for undelivered messages.

✍️ How to use a template right inside a chat

You do not have to open the Templates section. You can send a saved text straight from a conversation:

Open the chat with the customer
Next to the input field click the templates icon 🗂️
The Message templates window opens, with search
In a WABA channel there will be two groups: HSM templates (WABA) (approved ones only) and your regular Templates. In other channels you will see regular templates only
Pick the one you need:
- A regular template: the text goes straight into the input field, and you can edit it before sending
- An HSM template: a window opens where you fill in the variables (if there are any) and then send

Category labels in the picker

So you never have to guess whether a message will get through, every HSM template in the picker carries a colour-coded label with its category:

Service (green label), with the note "Recommended: it will arrive even if the customer has been silent for a while". This is the UTILITY category, and Meta's advertising limit does not apply to it.
Promotional (yellow label), with the note "May not arrive if the customer has not replied for a long time". This is the MARKETING category.
Verification code (blue label): one-time codes, the AUTHENTICATION category.

The same label and explanation appear in the send window, where you fill in the variables. So right before sending you know what to expect from the message.

Service templates come first in the list: the ones that will definitely arrive are the ones you see first, and promotional ones sit lower down. Above the list there are filter buttons: All, Service, Promotional and Codes. If you have a lot of templates, click Service, and only the ones that pass without Meta's limits will remain.

The labels work everywhere a WazzaBee chat opens: in the dashboard, on your phone, and in the built-in chats inside Bitrix24 and amoCRM.

From this same window you can click Create and make a new template without leaving the chat.

✅ Checklist

☐ You understand the difference between Chat templates and HSM (WABA)
☐ You have created at least one chat template for a frequent reply
☐ You know that HSM is what lets you message a customer first on WhatsApp
☐ You can insert a template into a chat via the 🗂️ icon next to the input field
☐ You check the category label in the picker: Service means reliable, Promotional means it may not arrive
☐ You know what to do with a rejected HSM template (reason → Recreate)
☐ You know that "Not delivered: WhatsApp limited delivery" is Meta's cap on marketing templates, and that service UTILITY templates are not affected by it

Detailed HSM template examples

If you want to see how HSM templates work in real situations (test results, appointment reminders, invoices, order statuses, Bitrix24 and CRM robots), read the detailed article "WhatsApp HSM templates in WazzaBee: examples for chat, CRM and the 24-hour window".