WhatsApp Connector Task Succeed Without Sending Message

[MrDeeb]

Greetings all,

I am not able to send messages using the WhatsApp Business Outbound Connector because while the execution path of the process instance shows that it was successfully completed, the message was not sent to the specified recipient phone number.

What I Have Tried

• Adding “+” before the recipient phone number, but the same issue still presists.
• Sending the message using cURL from the terminal or from the Meta Developer Platform, and it worked fine.
• Sending the message using cURL but with the same version the connector is using (which is v.17 instead of v.22) and it also worked fine.
• Double-checked the configuration of the connector (i.e., Access Token, Sender Phone Number Id, Recipent Phone Number).

Any ideas why the connector is not sending the message?
Otherwise, it looks like I might have to send the message from an external service instead…

Thanks!

[sbuettner]

Hi @MrDeeb, can you share some more details please.

• Are you using SaaS or Self-Managed? Which version of Camunda?
• Can you share your cURL statement that worked (without your credentials) ? We can then compare it to what the REST Connector (which the WhatsApp Connector is based on) is doing.

Thanks

[MrDeeb]

Hi @sbuettner , sure!

• SaaS (Camunda 8.6+gen10).
• cURL statement that worked (also works for v17.0):

curl -i -X POST https://graph.facebook.com/v22.0/661486303705385/messages \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer ***' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{ "messaging_product": "whatsapp", "to": "************", "type": "template", "template": { "name": "hello_world", "language": { "code": "en_US" } } }'

Thanks.

[sbuettner]

Thanks, it seems like "recipient_type": "individual" is not part of your curl request. Does it work without it being present?

Can you share the result (response of whatsapp) of the call in Operate?

[MrDeeb]

• Yes, the cURL request I sent worked as it is (without "recipient_type": "individual").
• The response of WhatsApp in Operate:

{
  "status": 200,
  "headers": {
    "x-fb-trace-id": "AU598ojwxJn",
    "x-fb-request-id": "AOo9qnslWlq43jCpnLZdWz8",
    "X-FB-Connection-Quality": "EXCELLENT; q=0.9, rtt=4, rtx=0, c=10, mss=1228, tbw=3402, tp=-1, tpl=-1, uplat=516, ullat=0",
    "Alt-Svc": "h3=\":443\"; ma=86400",
    "Access-Control-Allow-Origin": "*",
    "Connection": "keep-alive",
    "x-fb-rev": "1021629914",
    "Pragma": "no-cache",
    "x-ad-api-version-warning": "The call has been auto-upgraded to v22.0 as v17.0 has been deprecated.",
    "Date": "Mon, 07 Apr 2025 13:03:48 GMT",
    "x-business-use-case-usage": {
      "3841869786051291": [
        {
          "type": "whatsapp",
          "call_count": 1,
          "total_cputime": 0,
          "total_time": 1,
          "estimated_time_to_regain_access": 0
        }
      ]
    },
    "Strict-Transport-Security": "max-age=15552000; preload",
    "Cache-Control": "private, no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate",
    "Vary": "Origin",
    "Expires": "Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMT",
    "Content-Length": "178",
    "X-FB-Debug": "3PESisPqNqEtuOA/Z0SBHgDCnMDAEbAth8WQCMzEVRhOb4yCWp/tHeuBpTyhda/iKQzC2tv0hfZtvKxeEVK85w==",
    "facebook-api-version": "v22.0",
    "Content-Type": "text/javascript; charset=UTF-8"
  },
  "body": {
    "messaging_product": "whatsapp",
    "contacts": [
      {
        "input": "201206715400",
        "wa_id": "201206715400"
      }
    ],
    "messages": [
      {
        "id": "wamid.HBgMMjAxMjA2NzE1NDAwFQIAERgSMzI3QTlGNDU1NkI0RDg0MTQwAA=="
      }
    ]
  },
  "reason": "OK"
}

[sbuettner]

Thanks @MrDeeb. The response looks like everything was processed correctly from our side. Can you reach out their support as well why you get a successful response but without the expected result of the message being sent?

[MrDeeb]

I implemented an external service to handle sending the WhatsApp message for now.

I still want to use the WhatsApp connector, so I will update the thread with their response later when I get to it.

Thanks @sbuettner for your time!

[sbuettner]

Thanks @MrDeeb. We are looking forward to receive an update on this to find out whether we need to update the Connector.

[MrDeeb]

Hello @sbuettner , I couldn’t find a way to contact them directly as all I can see in the support page some docs and FAQ, so I posted about this issue in the community.

[MrDeeb]

I did not receive a response from them, but I solved the problem by changing the Message type in the connector configuration from “Plain text” to “Message template.”

Using the cURL command with the message type being “text” instead of “template” reproduced the same problem, so it only worked in the external service because of using “template” as the message type in the request body.

Unfortunately, even though following the cloud API docs, I couldn’t find out how to send plain text messages either by the connector or the external service.

[MrDeeb]

Solution

The issue was not related to Camunda or the connector. It is just how WhatsApp treats new messages from new numbers.

I was not able to send plain text messages because I never replied!
You can send other types of messages than template messages only if the received phone number has replied at least once…

I found out that from here.