---
title: "Send WhatsApp templates from the inbox — Dazza help"
description: "WhatsApp only allows free replies for 24 hours. After that, pick an approved template in Dazza’s inbox, fill its variables, preview it and send it."
url: https://dazza.io/help/whatsapp-templates
updated: 2026-10-27
---

# WhatsApp templates

After WhatsApp’s 24-hour window closes, send an approved template from the inbox. Dazza reads your templates from Meta and fills in what it knows.

*2 min read · Updated 27 Oct 2026 · 4 sections*

WhatsApp only lets businesses write freely for 24 hours after the customer’s last message. After that, the only messages it delivers are **templates** that Meta has approved. Dazza reads your approved templates from your WhatsApp Business Account, so your team can send one from the inbox.

## When the window has closed

Open the conversation. In place of the reply box, Dazza says the window has closed, when the customer last wrote, and why a typed reply wouldn’t arrive. While it’s open, the reply box shows when it closes in its last few hours.

1. Press **Send a template**.
2. Pick a template. Each shows its language and category, and a preview of its text.
3. Fill in its variables. Dazza fills in what it knows: the customer’s name after a greeting (“Hi {{1}}”) or in a variable called `first_name` or `name`, their email or phone, your business’s name, and your name (“it’s {{2}} from…”).
4. Check the preview, which shows the template as the customer will see it, then press **Send template**.

Sending a template takes the conversation over from Dazza, as replying does. The message shows in the thread with the template’s name, and its delivery is tracked like any reply: **Sent**, **Delivered**, **Read**, or **Not sent** with WhatsApp’s reason and **Try again**.

Once the customer writes back, the window opens again and you can reply normally.

## What can be sent

- Text in the heading and body, with numbered (`{{1}}`) or named (`{{first_name}}`) variables.
- A picture, video or document heading, from a public `https://` address you give.
- Link buttons with a variable at the end of the address, and copy-code buttons.
- Quick-reply and phone buttons, which need nothing filled in.

Sign-in code (authentication) templates are sent by your own system, so the inbox doesn’t offer them. Neither does it offer templates with a location heading or catalogue buttons.

## Your templates

Create and edit templates in Meta’s WhatsApp Manager (**Account tools → Message templates**). Meta usually reviews a new one within a day.

Dazza reads them when you connect WhatsApp, when the list in the inbox is an hour old, when Meta says one was approved, paused or rejected, and whenever you press **Read again** (in the inbox, or on the WhatsApp connection in **Channels**). The Channels page shows how many are approved.

To read templates, the access token you connected needs the `whatsapp_business_management` permission as well as `whatsapp_business_messaging`. If it’s missing, the inbox says so.

## Plans

Templates are part of WhatsApp, on Growth and above.