A template is a message WhatsApp has reviewed in advance. It is the only thing you can send to a customer outside the 24-hour window, which makes it the most important thing you will set up after connecting your number.
Templates live under Settings → Templates. They belong to the WhatsApp Business Account, not to one inbox: if two of your numbers are on the same business account, both can send the same template.
Use one for any message you need to start rather than answer: an order update, an appointment reminder, a payment reminder, a follow-up on a conversation that went quiet. Inside the window you do not need one — type the message.
Two categories, and WhatsApp picks the final one
| Category | For | Note |
|---|---|---|
| UTILITY | something that follows from an action the customer took — an order, a booking, an invoice | approved most readily |
| MARKETING | offers, announcements, anything promotional | reviewed more strictly, and the usual reason for a rejection |
You choose one; WhatsApp decides the final category and may change it. What Lynomia Chat stores afterwards is WhatsApp's answer, not your request. An AUTHENTICATION template — one-time passcodes — cannot be written here at all: WhatsApp writes that kind of body itself and needs an Android package name and signature hash, so a template authored here would be one the product could never send.
What a template is made of
| Part | Rules |
|---|---|
| Header | optional; text, image, video or document. A text header is up to 60 characters and may hold one variable |
| Message | required, up to 1024 characters |
| Footer | optional, up to 60 characters, and no variables |
| Buttons | up to ten in total: up to ten quick replies, two website buttons, one call button, one copy-code button. Keep the quick replies next to each other — WhatsApp refuses them scattered among the others |
A website button may hold one variable, and it has to come at the end of the address.
Variables, and the sample values that are not real
Write a variable as {{1}}, {{2}} if you chose numbered variables, or {{order_number}} if you chose named
ones. Three rules catch most rejections before they happen:
- a variable cannot be the first or last thing in the text;
- two variables cannot sit next to each other — put words between them;
- numbered variables have to run 1, 2, 3 in the order they appear, and named ones have to be unique lowercase words.
Each variable then grows its own sample value box. These are required, and they are what WhatsApp reads when it reviews the template. They are never sent to a customer. The real value is filled in at send time — by the agent in the composer, by you when you build a campaign, or by a flow.
For an image, video or document header, WhatsApp wants a sample file rather than text. Upload it in WhatsApp Manager once and paste the handle it gives you into Sample media handle.
What gets approved
Lynomia Chat checks the structural rules WhatsApp publishes — lengths, component types, variable placement, button counts and samples — before letting you submit, and shows each problem against the field that caused it. That saves review cycles, and it is all it does. Passing those checks is not approval. WhatsApp reviews tone, accuracy and whether the content fits the category, and none of that is a rule anyone can check in advance. In practice, utility messages about a real order get approved quickly; vague promotional copy and anything that promises what you cannot deliver are where rejections concentrate.
The starters
The builder offers eight starting points at the top. Each one fills the form with a draft in English or Arabic that you then edit. They are not templates, and none of them is approved — WhatsApp reviews whatever you submit, exactly as if you had written it from scratch.
| Starter | Category | Carries |
|---|---|---|
| Order shipped | UTILITY | a tracking link button |
| Order delivered | UTILITY | two quick replies |
| Delivery delayed | UTILITY | — |
| Appointment reminder | UTILITY | confirm and reschedule quick replies |
| Payment due | UTILITY | a link to the invoice |
| Back in stock | MARKETING | an unsubscribe footer |
| Support follow-up | UTILITY | — |
| Welcome message | UTILITY | — |
Steps
- Settings → Templates → New template.
- Pick the WhatsApp inbox. This decides which business account the template is created in.
- Give it a name — lowercase letters, numbers and underscores. It can never be changed.
- Type the language code of the template's own text:
en_US,ar, and so on. Not the language of your dashboard, and it can never be changed either. - Choose the category and whether variables are numbered or named.
- Write the message, and add a header, footer or buttons if you need them. The preview beside the form redraws as you type, using the same renderer that draws real messages.
- Fill in a sample value for every variable.
- Save draft. Nothing has gone to WhatsApp yet. Submit it when you are ready — see the template lifecycle.
A worked example
A clinic wants to confirm bookings. An administrator opens New template, chooses the Appointment reminder
starter, and edits it to appointment_reminder_ar in language ar, category UTILITY. The body becomes a sentence
holding the patient's name, the date and the doctor; the samples are a real-looking name, "Sunday 12 October" and
"Dr Al-Harbi". Two quick replies go underneath. Saved, submitted, approved in minutes.
Who can do this
Administrators only, for every part of the templates page. Agents send approved templates from the composer but cannot see or change the template manager.
Limits
- The name and the language can never change after a template is created. Nothing can rename a template, in Lynomia Chat or at WhatsApp.
- Catalogue, carousel, product-list and limited-time-offer components cannot be written or sent here. Neither can a location header or a call-permission button. Templates using them appear in the list but are managed in WhatsApp Manager.
- A copy-code sample is capped at 15 characters, stricter than WhatsApp's own limit, because a longer coupon would fail at send time.
- There is no template library from Meta to pick from. The starters are Lynomia Chat's own.
- Satisfaction survey templates are read-only here. They are managed in the relevant inbox's survey settings.
- On a Twilio inbox, templates are not managed in Lynomia Chat. The page links out to Twilio.
- A template's quality rating appears on its detail panel only when WhatsApp reports one. There is no quality dashboard and no health score page.
- Templates refresh from WhatsApp automatically every few hours, and Sync templates refreshes them now.
Related
If it does not work
The page says to connect a WhatsApp inbox. No WhatsApp channel exists yet. See Connect a WhatsApp number.
It will not let me save. Read the problems above the fields. The most common are a missing sample value, a variable at the very start or end of the message, and two variables with nothing between them.
It says a template with that name already exists. A name has to be unique per language within one business account — including a name WhatsApp is still holding from a template you deleted in the last 30 days.
A part of my template cannot be edited. It uses a component Lynomia Chat does not author. Manage that one in WhatsApp Manager.