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Setting up Telegram

Creating and Exposing the Bot

The first step is to start a chat with @BotFather and create a new bot. This will give you the token needed for the Balancer API to manage the bot. For more information about this process, visit:

From BotFather to 'Hello World'

Creating Balancer's Group

Once the bot is created, save the token and proceed to create a new Telegram group. Next, add the bot as a member of the group so it can send messages.

The final step is to retrieve the Chat's ID, which is required for the bot to send messages. Follow these steps to get the Chat ID:

1. Make sure you have added the bot as a member of the group.
2. Send a few messages to the group from your account.
3. Send a GET request to this URL: https://api.telegram.org/bot<YOUR_BOT_TOKEN>/getUpdates

Example: https://api.telegram.org/bot123456789:jbd78sadvbdy63d37gda37bd8/getUpdates

The response should look like this:

{
  "ok": true,
  "result": [
    {
      "update_id": 838xxxx36,
      "channel_post": {...},
        "chat": {
          "id": -1001xxxxxx062,
          "title": "....",
          "type": "channel"
        },
        "date": 1703065989,
        "text": "test"
      }
    }
  ]
}

The chatID is located inside the chat object under the id property. This value is generally a large negative integer. For example: -1001629725463.

Sources:

• Telegram Bot - how to get a group chat id?
• How to get Telegram Bot Chat ID

Lastly, input the Telegram Token and the Chat ID in the configuration form.