Update (2022): Links to phone numbers such as https://t.me/+1XXXXXXX will lead you to a web page the same as username links do, but you can only start chatting with the user if their privacy settings allows you. Old answer: It’s NOT possible to link to Telegram like this for a phone numbers so far, because … Read more
As @maak pointed out, you need to first send a message to the bot before the bot can send messages to you.
Today I found that in the Telegram desktop client I can add a hyperlink pressing Ctrl-K (or through popup menu by RightClick)! It’s great! No bots and markdown needed!
For those who are still looking for this answer in 2021. The problem is probably that you are using VPN accessing https://my.telegram.org/apps I switched my off and it works now
That Wiki page is outdated. Telegram accepts standard Markdown text formatting: Bold: Double * = **hello world** Italic: Double _ = __hello world__ Monospace: Triple ` = “`hello world“`
Install-Package Telegram.Bot Create a bot using the botfather get the api key using the /token command (still in botfather) use this code: var bot = new Api(“your api key here”); var t = await bot.SendTextMessage(“@channelname or chat_id”, “text message”); You can now pass a channel username (in the format @channelusername) in the place of chat_id … Read more
Post one message from User to the Bot. Open https://api.telegram.org/bot<Bot_token>/getUpdates page. Find this message and navigate to the result->message->chat->id key. Use this ID as the [chat_id] parameter to send personal messages to the User.
Edit: now there is yet an easier way to do this – when creating your group, just mention the full bot name (eg. @UniversalAgent1Bot) and it will list it as you type. Then you can just tap on it to add it. Old answer: Create a new group from the menu. Don’t add any bots … Read more
Update: I created a GitHub repository with a very simple PHP application to illustrate the concept explained below: https://github.com/pevdh/telegram-auth-example Whether you use a webhook or not actually does not really matter. The “deep linking” explained: Let the user log in on an actual website with actual username-password authentication. Generate a unique hashcode (we will call … Read more