How to Connect the Telegram Bot
Connect Telegram from My Profile. Click Connect Telegram, open the link, and a private chat is connected to this workspace. The bot then answers /search, /stats and /stop, and only with records you can already see. Sending /start on its own does not connect the chat, and a message with no command does not search.
Telegram’s founder said in March 2025 that the app had passed a billion monthly users (TechCrunch, 19 March 2025) — a company figure rather than an audited one, and the reason a private chat is a useful place to look a record up.
How do I connect Telegram?
Section titled “How do I connect Telegram?”- Open the account menu (your initials) and choose Profile. The page is titled My Profile. You can also open Settings → Profile.
- On the Telegram card, click Connect Telegram.
- A link appears on the card. It works for 10 minutes, and only once. Open it. That connects this private chat to the workspace you are in.
- To disconnect later, send
/stopto the bot. The bot replies Disconnected. and stays in your Telegram list. It just no longer knows who is typing.
The card says the same things: Get answers about your records in a private Telegram chat, This link works for 10 minutes, and To disconnect, send /stop to the bot.
If the link has expired, the bot says so and points you back to My Profile → Connect Telegram for a new one. If Telegram is not available for this workspace, the card says Telegram isn’t available on this workspace yet.
Typing /start by itself does not connect anything. The bot tells you to open HARi, go to My Profile, and choose Connect Telegram.
What can I ask?
Section titled “What can I ask?”| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
/search <text> | Finds records you can see. Up to five, each with a link that opens it in HARi. |
/stats | How many records of each type you can see. |
/stop | Disconnects the chat. |
/help | Lists these commands. |
Those are the commands. A message with no slash is not a search. The bot answers Unknown command. Type /help to see what I can do.
/search uses the same search as HARi, under your own permissions. It does not treat leads or opportunities as a special case, and it does not show a record your role cannot open. An empty /search is told how to use the command. Example: /search Acme.
/stats uses your workspace’s own names. If you renamed Contacts to Members, the bot says Members. If there is nothing you can see, it says so.
What can the bot see?
Section titled “What can the bot see?”Exactly what you can see in HARi, and nothing more. Two people can connect the same bot and get different answers to the same question. See permissions and security for how that access is decided.
- Private chats only. A group chat gets no reply at all, even one the bot has been added to.
- Nothing before a connection. A chat that is not connected is told only that it is not connected, and to open My Profile and choose Connect Telegram. It cannot reach a record, a count or a name.
- One chat at a time. This account keeps one connected chat. Opening a new link replaces it. Connecting the same chat from a second workspace moves it, and it stops answering for the first.
- A deactivated account stops here. The next message is told the chat is not connected. Leaving the workspace disconnects the chat. A suspended workspace does not answer with records.
HARi checks that each message really comes from Telegram. Telegram’s Bot API documentation states the purpose of that check: “The header is useful to ensure that the request comes from a webhook set by you” (Telegram Bot API).
Getting CRM events into Telegram
Section titled “Getting CRM events into Telegram”That is a different path, and it does not use this bot. In Settings → Workflows, a workflow’s Call webhook (URL) action can post into a Telegram chat or channel when something happens — a deal won, a task overdue. The bot it posts to is yours, not HARi’s. Telegram bot integration covers the token, the chat ID and the rate limits.