Chat with your dealership from Telegram
Link Telegram to chat with your private dealer AI from your phone, get proactive alerts, and approve safe actions with a tap.
Connect Telegram to chat with your private Dealer AI from your phone. Ask about inventory, leads, deals, and tasks, get proactive alerts, and approve actions with a tap. It all runs inside the Telegram app you already have.
Telegram works only when AutoDealer.io has turned the bot on for the platform. If the card says it isn't set up yet, contact AutoDealer.io support to enable it.
Connect Telegram
You start the connection from the dashboard, then finish on your phone. Each person on the team connects their own Telegram from their own login. There's no owner or manager requirement.
- Go to Settings → AI assistant. Scroll to the Dealer AI: your private assistant section and find the Telegram card.
- Click Connect Telegram. The card shows a one-time deep link, an Open Telegram button, and the link text underneath.
- On the phone where you use Telegram, tap Open Telegram (or open the link shown beneath it). Telegram opens the AutoDealer.io bot.
- Press Start in the chat. The bot replies "✅ Connected! I'm your dealership assistant. Ask me about inventory, leads, deals, or tasks, and I'll send you proactive updates here too." when you're paired.
- Back in the dashboard, click I've connected to refresh. The card now shows Connected with your Telegram username (@yourname).
The connection link works once and expires in 15 minutes. If it expires, just click Connect Telegram again for a fresh link. Always open the link on the phone where Telegram lives. That's how it pairs the right account.
The AI always acts with your role and permissions. A salesperson sees and does only what a salesperson can, and an owner gets full access. Connecting from your phone doesn't change what you're allowed to do.
Chat with your assistant
Once connected, message the bot in Telegram like you would the chat box on your dashboard. It's the same assistant and the same conversation, so a question you start at your desk continues from your phone.
- Ask things like "How many cars did we sell this week?" or "Show me new leads."
- It can also message you first: your morning summary, new-lead alerts, and overdue-title reminders land in the same chat. Choose what it sends under Settings → AI assistant, in the What your assistant keeps you posted on card.
Some lot-level alerts (aging inventory, stuck deals, overdue title work, BHPH delinquencies, the morning/weekly digests) are manager-only. As a salesperson you'll still get your own leads and tasks, but not those.
For your security, the assistant works only in a private Telegram chat (one-on-one with the bot), not in groups.
Send photos
Send a photo, with or without a caption, and the assistant sees it. "Add this to A100" prepares the same card as attaching the photo in the web chat: the photo is added to that vehicle when you approve, private unless the card's switch is on. PDFs are read too; other file types get a reply saying they cannot be read.
You can send up to 25 photos at once, for example a walk-around of a car you just bought. Telegram sends more than 10 as several albums; the assistant waits a moment until they have all arrived and answers them together, in one reply. Put your note in the caption, or send it right after. Each file can be up to 20 MB (Telegram's limit for bots). An iPhone photo sent as a file in HEIC format cannot be read; send it as a photo instead.
If the assistant asks which car the photos are or what they are for, just answer in your next message: it still has the photos, and one card adds them all to that car. Approve it in the app or with the button under the card.
The assistant asks before it guesses. If you didn't say what the photos are for, it asks whether they are auction photos, transport, recon, or ready to publish. If no photo shows a VIN and you didn't name the car, it asks which car they belong to. A PDF or a photo of a document (a title, a license, a receipt) can be filed on a record from the phone as well: "file this on A100 as the title" prepares a document card, and nothing is filed until you approve.
Sources under an answer
When an answer draws on your records, it ends with a Sources list, the same list the web chat shows under an answer. Each source is a numbered line with a link that opens the record in your dashboard, so you can check the car, the deal or the lead behind a number without leaving your phone. Long lists stop at ten with a count of the rest.
Approving actions
Every write starts as a proposal, just like on the dashboard. Manual proposals wait for your approval. If the owner has enabled Autopilot for an eligible routine action, the application may try it after the reply finishes and all final checks pass; the message shows the resulting proposal status instead of asking you to approve a settled action.
Telegram shows every proposal as a numbered item with its current status, summary, and review fields. The buttons carry the same number, so each decision is visibly tied to the proposal it controls. If a proposal has editable fields, open the AutoDealer dashboard when you want to change them before approving.
For most actions (adding a vehicle, creating a task, updating a lead), a pending numbered proposal comes with two buttons:
- Tap ✅ Approve #1 (or the matching proposal number) to run it. The assistant removes that proposal's buttons and replies "✅ Done" with a short summary of what it did; buttons for any other pending proposals stay available.
- Tap ✖ Reject #1 to dismiss that numbered proposal.
The same buttons come with cards the assistant made without you asking. When the morning scan prepares a follow-up task, or an app you connected under Settings → Connected apps prepares a change, the message that reaches Telegram carries the card's numbered details and, for a standard action still waiting, its Approve and Reject buttons. A card you already decided on the dashboard while quiet hours held the message arrives with its final status and no button.
If Telegram cannot confirm an action after execution may have started, it removes that proposal's buttons and marks it Needs review: outcome unknown. Do not send the approval again. Open the dashboard and inspect the affected record and activity trail first.
While an outcome needs review, AutoDealer pauses all new AI-proposed changes for that dealership. Contact support after you inspect the affected record so the ambiguous receipt can be reconciled before AI changes resume.
Money and irreversible actions never get a one-tap button, and an email or text the assistant drafted is one of them. Telegram shows their review fields, including the recipient, subject, and complete message for an email or text draft, but typed "yes" or "no" is not treated as authorization because a text reply cannot be securely bound to one exact proposal. Review and decide these actions in the AutoDealer dashboard. Every other action still uses its proposal-ID-bound Telegram buttons, including sending one of your message templates and logging a call, visit or note.
Quiet hours
Messages the assistant sends on its own (the morning summary, new-lead and overdue-title alerts) can wait while you are off the clock. Quiet hours hold them and deliver them when the window ends. Your own questions are always answered right away, quiet hours or not, and the dashboard's notification bell is never held. The morning list of what Autopilot changed on its own arrives in the bell only, not on Telegram.
From Telegram:
/quiet 21-7sets nightly quiet hours in your dealership's timezone (also/quiet 9pm-7am)./quiet 2hpauses alerts for two hours (up to 24 hours, in hours or minutes)./quiet offturns quiet hours and any pause off./quieton its own shows the current setting.
From the dashboard: the Telegram card under Settings → AI assistant has the same Quiet hours control, with a Resume now button while a pause is running.
Quiet hours apply to messages the assistant sends on its own. A message that was already queued before you set quiet hours still goes out. Hours follow your dealership timezone (Settings → Dealer info), Eastern Time when none is set.
Disconnect Telegram
- Go to Settings → AI assistant and find the Telegram card.
- Click Disconnect and confirm the prompt ("Disconnect Telegram? You can reconnect anytime.").
You can reconnect anytime by clicking Connect Telegram again.
FAQ
Will I hear about new emails on Telegram?
Yes. When an email arrives at your dealership address, the person who gets the bell for it (the lead's owner, or the dealership owner when the sender matches nobody on file) also gets a short Telegram heads-up within about fifteen minutes, as long as their Telegram is connected and the two email alerts are on under Settings → AI assistant. Quiet hours apply.
Does Telegram cost anything?
No. Telegram is a free messaging app, and there's nothing extra for you to install or run. You connect the AutoDealer.io bot and chat from the Telegram app you already have.
Do I need to be an owner or manager to connect?
No. Anyone on the team connects their own Telegram from their own login. The assistant then acts with your own role and permissions.
Can the AI change things in my account from Telegram without me approving?
Only for an eligible routine action the dealership owner deliberately enabled in Autopilot. The application still rechecks the live policy, your role, feature access, action risk, proposal values, and injection safeguards first. Manual routine proposals use their numbered ✅ Approve button, and so does a templated email or a logged contact. Money and irreversible actions, drafted emails and texts included, must be reviewed and decided in the dashboard; typed "yes" or "no" in Telegram never authorizes a proposal.
Can I approve from my phone something the AI suggested at my desk?
For a card the assistant made in a chat you typed at your desk, open the AutoDealer dashboard in your phone's browser: a dashboard chat is not mirrored into Telegram, and a typed Telegram reply cannot decide it. Cards the assistant makes on its own (a follow-up task from the morning scan) and cards a connected app prepares do reach Telegram, with their details and proposal-bound Approve and Reject buttons for standard actions. Money and irreversible actions, drafted emails and texts included, must always be decided in the dashboard.
Can I stop alerts at night?
Yes. Send /quiet 21-7 to the bot (dealership time), or set quiet hours on the Telegram card under Settings → AI assistant. Alerts that come up in that window arrive when it ends. Your own questions are always answered right away.
My messages stopped coming through in Telegram.
If you blocked the bot, the connection goes dormant and messages pause. The card under Settings → AI assistant will say messages are paused. Just send the bot any message in Telegram to resume.
I tried connecting but it says my Telegram is already in use.
That Telegram account is already linked to another dealership user. Disconnect it there first, then generate a fresh link and try again.
Someone left our team. Can they still use Telegram?
No. The assistant checks your live account on every message. If your account is deactivated, Telegram access stops immediately, even if the link still exists.
What if a stranger messages the bot?
Nothing happens. The bot only acts for connected accounts. Anyone who isn't linked just gets instructions to connect from the dashboard. It never exposes your dealership data.