Message Templates

Templates are pre-approved messages you can send to a customer outside the 24-hour customer-care window. They're authored on the channel platform (Meta Business Manager / WeChat OA platform) and mirrored into Kinderpedia for picking.

Where to author

Templates are not created in Kinderpedia — they live on the platform that owns the messaging surface:

• WhatsApp Business — business.facebook.com/wa/manage/message-templates. Each template goes through Meta's approval queue.
• WeChat OA — WeChat's Official Account Platform → Function → Template Messages. Service Account only.
• Messenger / Instagram — Meta's "Message Tags" instead of templates; we expose the same picker.

Kinderpedia mirrors approved templates only. Pending / rejected ones don't show up in the picker.

Sync templates

Click Sync templates on the Integrations row (WhatsApp / WeChat). Your local template cache gets repopulated. The picker reads from this cache — it never hits Meta / WeChat directly at send time, so the picker stays fast.

If a template is unapproved or removed on the platform, it disappears from the picker on the next sync.

Variables

Templates carry placeholders:

• WhatsApp — positional: {{1}}, {{2}}, {{3}}. The picker renders one input per placeholder, in order, with the surrounding text from the template body.
• WeChat — named: {{name.DATA}}, {{date.DATA}}, etc. The picker renders one input per name. WeChat templates also carry a first.DATA (header) and remark.DATA (footer).

Variables can be filled manually or auto-substituted from the linked parent/lead. The substitution rules:

Template variable	Auto-filled from
name, parent_name	linked parent's full name
child_name	linked lead's child name
school_name	School Settings → School Name
appointment_date	the next upcoming activity for this lead (if any)
anything else	empty, you fill it in

Bulk send

For bulk template sends to multiple leads at once, use Bulk Actions on the roster (Bulk WhatsApp / Bulk WeChat). The flow:

1. Select leads (up to 100 per batch — platform throttling).
2. Pick a template + fill variables (variables apply to all selected leads; per-lead variables auto-substitute from each row's parent).
3. Dry-run preview — see exactly which leads will receive what, and which will be skipped (no phone, opted out, on blocklist).
4. Confirm & Send.

Bulk sends always go via the template route — there's no per-recipient open window check for bulk.

Why templates exist

Meta and WeChat treat unsolicited free-form messages outside the open window as spam. Sending too many gets your number / OA suspended. Templates are the platforms' way of saying "we've reviewed this content as legitimate — go ahead."

The 24-hour rule isn't a Kinderpedia choice. We just enforce it client-side so you can't get throttled.