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Senders: your connected numbers and profiles

A sender is a specific address, profile, or website widget that customers can message to reach your business. This can be a WhatsApp Business phone number, an Instagram professional account, a Facebook Page, or a Web Chat widget. See connect-web-chat to add the widget to your website.

Your account can have multiple connected senders, which you can manage in the dashboard under Admin → Senders.

Playbook linking

Every sender connected to your account must be bound to a playbook, which provides the instructions, phases, and resources the assistant uses to handle conversations on that channel.

• Default assignment: When you first connect a sender, Yapper automatically links it to a playbook.
• Changing playbooks: You can change which playbook a sender uses by opening the sender's details in Admin → Senders and selecting a different playbook from the dropdown.

For more details on managing your instructions, see playbooks.

Sender status

The Senders page shows a status for each sender and an overall health summary at the top.

• Connected / No status: The sender is set up normally. "No status" simply means no connection events have been recorded yet; it is not a problem.
• Sending blocked: WhatsApp has blocked business-initiated sending on the sender's WhatsApp Business Account — most commonly because of a payment problem. Hover over the badge to see the cause. To fix a payment problem, open Meta Business Manager → Billing & payments for that WhatsApp Business Account and update the payment method. The block applies to the whole WhatsApp Business Account, so every sender that shares it is affected. While blocked, replies to customers who messaged you recently may still go through, but scheduled and follow-up messages will not.
• Disabled: The connection itself is down (for example, the sender was disconnected or removed on the Meta side). Reconnect the sender from the Admin page to restore it.

Profile pictures

Each row on the Senders page shows the profile picture that channel is currently displaying to your customers — the WhatsApp Business profile photo, the Instagram account's picture, the Facebook Page's photo, or the agent avatar in your web chat widget. For WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook, Yapper reads this live from the channel every time the page loads, so it always reflects what the channel is showing, including changes you made directly in WhatsApp Manager or the Instagram app. Web chat has no external channel to read — Yapper shows the picture you set here, which is the same one the widget displays.

Senders with no picture set, and Facebook Pages still using Meta's default grey avatar, show the Yapper logo instead. The logo also appears when a channel is temporarily unreachable; the rest of the page is unaffected, and the picture reappears on the next refresh.

A newly connected sender picks up the picture the channel already has, no action needed.

Setting a picture

WhatsApp and web chat senders can have their picture set from Yapper. Hover over the sender's picture on the Senders page and click it to open the editor. Choose a JPEG or PNG, position and zoom it inside the circular preview, then save. For a web chat sender, this picture shows as the avatar beside the assistant's messages in the widget on your website.

The picture must be square, at least 192 × 192 pixels (640 × 640 looks best), and under 5 MB. Anything that is not square, too small, or the wrong file type is rejected before it is uploaded. WhatsApp displays the picture as a circle, so the editor draws a dashed ring marking the area that always stays visible — keep the important part inside it.

The new picture appears in the row as soon as you save. If it could not be applied, the row goes back to the previous picture and a message explains why, so what you see in the row is always what the channel is showing.

Each sender has its own picture. A WhatsApp picture belongs to one phone number, so two numbers on the same WhatsApp Business Account can legitimately differ, and setting the same logo everywhere means setting it on each sender.

Instagram senders

Instagram does not allow any third-party app to change an account's profile picture. Meta reserves avatar changes to the Instagram app itself as an account-takeover protection, so there is no setting or permission that unlocks picture uploads from Yapper. Change it in the Instagram app settings, and Yapper will display the updated picture on the next page refresh.

Facebook Messenger senders

Facebook Messenger senders are display-only — their pictures are not clickable on the Senders page. A Messenger sender's picture is your Facebook Page's photo, and changing it would change how your Page appears everywhere on Facebook, not just in Messenger. Change it in your Facebook Page settings, and Yapper will display the updated picture on the next page refresh.

Multi-channel messaging and the active sender

Customers may contact your business through more than one channel (for example, messaging you first on WhatsApp and later sending a direct message on Instagram). When their identities are linked, Yapper treats these interactions as a single customer relationship rather than separate, disconnected threads.

To ensure automated follow-ups and phase actions go to the right place, Yapper designates one channel as the active sender for that customer.

How the active sender is determined

• Initial contact: When a customer messages your business for the first time, the sender they contacted becomes their active sender.
• Switching channels (flipping): If the customer subsequently messages you on a different sender, Yapper automatically updates (flips) their active sender to the new channel, provided both senders are linked to the same playbook.
• Separate relationships: If the customer messages you on a channel linked to a different playbook, Yapper treats this as a separate business relationship. The active sender does not flip, and the conversations remain isolated.

Automated message routing and redirects

Automated follow-up messages and phase side effects always target the customer's active sender.

• Redirecting batch messages: If you send a scheduled message batch from a specific sender, but a customer's active sender has flipped to a different channel (using the same playbook), Yapper automatically reroutes and sends the message to the active sender instead.
• Skipping cross-playbook matches: If the customer's active sender is linked to a different playbook than the batch sender, the message is skipped for that customer.

Cross-channel acknowledgments

When a customer's active sender flips because they messaged you on a new channel, the assistant is made aware of the change. In its first reply on the new channel, the assistant will automatically acknowledge the transition (for example, referring to the prior channel and summarizing the last discussed topic) in its own voice before continuing the conversation.