Alright so for those that are searching the forums in the future, and found the support provided copy pasta reply less than useful… figured it out myself. Basically open terminal if you have linux or apple or cmd prompt/powershell if you have windows and input this line of code curl -X POST "https://api.telegram.org/botYOUR_BOT_TOKEN_HERE/sendMessage" -d "chat_id=YOUR_TELEGRAM_CHANNEL_ID_HERE&text=Test Message" (yes include the bot before YOUR_BOT_TOKEN_HERE when replacing that with your own bot token
You can get the bot token during creation of your telegram bot (you should have saved it) and you can get the channel ID by opening telegram web clicking the correct telegram channel to open it and the channel ID will display in the URL bar after the hastag # for example #-30200022992 (yes include the dash -)
If done properly it will make your bot send the “test message” text to the correct telegram channel, then it will show up in the chat ID drop-down field on Telegram.
Guess being an ex electronics repair tech has it’s uses but this was normally well out of my purview. Hope you found this useful. Yes Zapier I am available for part time work in your support department. Haha
I had to do the following to get my telegram channel ID to show up in my zap:
- Go to botfather and open bot settings using the menu
- in bot father settings → disable privacy mode in bot settings
- in botfather settings → in channel admin rights and group admin rights → allow bot to manage channel and group
- in botfather settings → give permission to delete message + pin messages + manage chat
- go into channel settings → click admin and make sure bot is given admin permissions
- if done correctly when you go into channel settings → click bot --> admin rights → it should say under the bot “has access to messages” (that means it can read all the messages)
- Post a message from my personal account into the telegram chat / channel with the bot
- Go back to zapier → to zap → to telegram send message action → to the action → click channel ID drop down → clear and refresh → channel ID should show up now