Connect a customer-facing Telegram bot in ~3 minutes:

1. Open @BotFather in Telegram → /newbot → pick a name and a username ending in bot → copy the API token (looks like 123456789:ABC...).
2. Dashboard → Integrations → Telegram → paste the token → Connect Telegram. We check the token with Telegram and register the webhook automatically — no curl, no URL copying. (The same field is still in Settings → Messaging Channels if you prefer it there.)
3. Verify: open your bot in Telegram and send /start — the AI should greet you. The Integrations page turns the Telegram pill green and names the bot you connected.
4. If it says the bot is already connected to another account: Telegram allows one bot to serve only one account here. Create a second bot in @BotFather for this account — a bot cannot be shared.
5. Connected the wrong bot? The Telegram card shows which bot is connected and has a Disconnect button — it stops the bot answering and tells Telegram to stop sending us its messages. Then connect the right one.

Things that trip people up:

• Always paste the full raw token from BotFather. The saved token is displayed masked (***...XXXX) — pasting that masked value back does nothing.
• If Telegram rejects the webhook registration, Settings shows a red banner with Telegram's error — the bot will NOT receive messages until that's resolved. A revoked token saves "successfully" but fails exactly here, so watch for the banner.
• The customer bot and the Operator Bridge bot are TWO different bots. The operator bot (separate Settings section) needs Group Privacy OFF in BotFather and lives in your operators' group chat (group IDs are negative numbers — get yours via @getmyid_bot). Never reuse one bot for both roles — Telegram allows only one webhook per bot.
• The green «Connected» badge means a token is saved, not that everything works — the real check is messaging the bot.