Core concepts in 5 minutes
These are the words you’ll meet again and again. Skim them now; you don’t need to memorise anything. The full Glossary has every term — this is just the vital few.
The essential terms
| Term | In plain words |
|---|---|
| Workspace | Your business’s private space in MsgBuddy — its own contacts, chats, team, and settings. Everything lives inside one. |
| WABA (WhatsApp Business Account) | Your official business account with Meta. MsgBuddy connects to it; it holds your phone number(s) and your approved templates. |
| Cloud API | Meta’s official system that MsgBuddy uses to send and receive your WhatsApp messages. (You never touch it directly — MsgBuddy does.) |
| Contact | One person you talk to, identified by their phone number. |
| Conversation | The ongoing thread of messages between your business and one contact. It lives in the Inbox. |
| Message | A single WhatsApp message — text, image, document, etc. — either inbound (from a customer) or outbound (from you). |
| Template | A message you write in advance and submit to Meta for approval. You need one to message someone first or outside the 24-hour window. |
| Session / 24-hour window | The 24 hours after a customer messages you, during which you can reply freely (no template needed). |
| Campaign | Sending one template to many contacts at once (a “broadcast”). |
| Segment | A saved filter that picks a group of contacts (e.g. “tagged VIP, in Delhi”). Used as a campaign’s audience. |
| Role | A teammate’s permission level in a workspace (Owner, Admin, Agent, and so on). |
| Catalog | Your list of products (kept at Meta) that you can show inside WhatsApp chats. |
| Subscription | A recurring standing order (e.g. daily bread) that MsgBuddy delivers and reminds about automatically. |
Three ideas worth a closer look
1. Template vs. free-form message
This trips up almost everyone at first, so let’s be crystal clear:
- Free-form message — anything you type yourself (text, photo, etc.). You can only send these within 24 hours of the customer’s last message to you.
- Template message — a pre-approved message. You can send these any time, including to start a brand-new conversation.
So: replying usually uses free-form. Reaching out first always uses a template.
2. Inbound vs. outbound
- Inbound = a message from a customer to you.
- Outbound = a message from you to a customer.
An inbound message “opens” the 24-hour window. That one idea connects Contacts, the Inbox, Templates, and Campaigns — which is why we keep coming back to it.
3. The three template categories
Every template belongs to one of three categories that Meta defines. They behave differently and even cost differently:
| Category | Used for | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Utility | Follow-ups to something the customer did | ”Your order #123 has shipped.” |
| Authentication | One-time passcodes / login codes | ”Your code is 4821.” |
| Marketing | Promotions, announcements, re-engagement | ”Weekend sale — 20% off!” |
Marketing is the most restricted (it’s where anti-spam rules bite hardest). We cover this fully in Templates.
If you only remember one sentence from this page, make it this: “To message someone first, or after 24 hours of silence, you need an approved template.” Everything else follows from that.
Next: a gentle look at how MsgBuddy stores your data → and how the pieces link together.