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Interactive message
A WhatsApp message type that renders tappable UI inside the chat — reply buttons, selectable lists, or product cards — instead of plain text the customer has to answer manually.
One term from the WhatsApp Business Platform glossary. Last updated 2026-07-25.
Interactive messages exist because free-text answers are expensive to interpret. A list message that offers eight service options returns an exact identifier when tapped, where the same question asked in prose returns something a parser has to guess at.
Inside the 24-hour service window, interactive messages can be sent freely. Outside it, the equivalent structure has to be built into an approved template with buttons, which is more constrained but still far better than asking the customer to type.
Related terms
- List message
- An interactive WhatsApp message that opens a scrollable menu of options when tapped. It supports more choices than reply buttons, grouped into labelled sections.
- Template buttons
- Tappable actions attached to a WhatsApp template. They come in two families: quick replies that send a preset response, and call-to-action buttons that open a URL or dial a number.
- WhatsApp Flows
- Structured, form-like screens that open inside a WhatsApp chat — dropdowns, date pickers, multi-step forms — so a business can collect structured input without free-text parsing.
See Interactive message in a real workspace
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