Turn on the WhatsApp assistant for residents

When you need this

Residents can message the estate on WhatsApp to check what they owe on their stand, see their latest invoices, and book or cancel gate passes for their visitors. You choose which of these they can do. The assistant only answers residents you have invited, and only about the stands their contact is linked to. Anything else it passes to your office.

Turn it on once your office is ready to answer the conversations it passes on. You can turn it off again at any time.

Steps

1. Open Settings, then WhatsApp assistant.
2. Read the message under the switch:
   • Your WhatsApp number is connected to the assistant. Modial has connected your number. Go on.
   • Your WhatsApp number isn't connected to the assistant yet. Ask Modial to connect it. You can still turn the switch on now; residents reach the assistant once the number is connected.
3. Turn on Residents can use the WhatsApp assistant. It saves straight away.
4. Under What residents can do on WhatsApp, untick anything you don't want the assistant to do: Check what they owe, See their invoices and statements, Book visitors, See and cancel visits. Each tickbox saves straight away and applies to the next message a resident sends. Passing residents to your office is always on, so it has no tickbox. If you untick them all, the screen warns: "With nothing ticked, the assistant can only pass residents to your office. To stop it answering altogether, turn off the switch above instead."
5. Invite residents: see Give someone WhatsApp access, or invite many at once from Who can use WhatsApp. A resident who hasn't accepted an invitation can't use the assistant.
6. Make sure someone in the office can answer: their role needs Read, answer and close residents' WhatsApp conversations, and Get the email when the estates WhatsApp assistant passes a resident to the office to get the email. Owners and Admins have both already; add them to other roles under Settings, Roles.

📷 estates-whatsapp-assistant-settings (out of date: retake it showing the What residents can do on WhatsApp tickboxes)

What you should see

• A message saying The WhatsApp assistant is on, and the switch stays on.
• When you tick or untick a box, a message such as See their invoices and statements: off, and the box stays as you set it.
• An invited resident who writes to the estate's WhatsApp number gets answers about their own stands. A resident with several stands is asked which one. The assistant's first answer in each conversation ends with Powered by EstateKeeper, a Modial Technologies product.
• WhatsApp appears just under Dashboard in the menu for people who can answer residents.

What residents can ask:

They ask	The assistant	Tickbox
"How much do I owe?"	Says what's owed on their stand in each currency, what's overdue, and their last payment.	Check what they owe
"Show my invoices"	Lists the latest invoices, newest first.	See their invoices and statements
"Send me my statement"	Sends the stand's statement as a PDF in the chat, the same statement the Statement screen prints. It runs from 1 January to today unless the resident names other dates. If the account has more than one currency, the resident is asked which.	See their invoices and statements
"Book my visitor for tomorrow at 2pm"	Reads the visitor's name, day and time back, and books it once they say yes. They get an access code to send their visitor, who shows it at the gate.	Book visitors
"Show my visits"	Lists upcoming visits to their stands. The access code shows only on visits they booked themselves.	See and cancel visits
"Cancel Rudo's visit"	Cancels a visit they booked, after they confirm. The access code stops working at the gate.	See and cancel visits
Anything else	Passes them to your office (see Answer residents on WhatsApp).	Always on

If a resident asks for something whose tickbox is off, the assistant tells them it isn't available on WhatsApp and offers to pass them to your office. When it greets them or says what it can help with, it mentions only what is ticked.

If something goes wrong

• Couldn't load the WhatsApp assistant settings: check your connection and click Try again.
• Couldn't change the WhatsApp assistant: the switch goes back to how it was. Try again; if it keeps failing, your role may be missing Turn the estate's WhatsApp assistant on or off.
• An error appears when you tick or untick a box, and the box goes back to how it was: try again. If it keeps failing, your role may be missing Turn the estate's WhatsApp assistant on or off.
• The tickboxes aren't there: the update that adds them hasn't reached your system yet. Every task is available to residents until it has.
• A resident says the bot told them "This number isn't set up for the estate's WhatsApp service yet": they haven't been invited, or they're writing from a number that isn't on their contact. Check their contact's phone numbers, then invite them.
• A resident is told "Sorry, the estate's WhatsApp service isn't available right now": the switch is off. Turn it on in step 3.
• You added a resident's number under Settings, Chatbot Whitelist, and they still can't use the assistant: the assistant doesn't use that list, and the screen says so: "The WhatsApp assistant no longer uses this list, so adding a number here doesn't give anyone access." Invite them instead (step 5).
• A resident says the assistant doesn't know their stand: their contact isn't linked to the stand, or the link has ended. Link the contact to the stand on the stand's Residents tab.