WhatsApp log
The Messages page in the Bird dashboard is your workspace's record of every WhatsApp message it has sent: every send made through POST /v1/whatsapp/messages lands here, newest first. Use it to confirm a message went out, see where it is in the delivery lifecycle, and read which template produced it. For a tour of where this page sits in the dashboard, see the dashboard tour.
The message list
Each row is one message. The columns are:
| Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Status | The message's current status (see Statuses), as a colored dot |
| From | The WhatsApp sender number the message was sent from |
| To | The recipient's number |
| Template | The template the message was sent from (click the row to open the message) |
| Category | The template's category |
| Sent | When the send was accepted, as a relative time (hover for the exact timestamp) |
The list is paginated, 25 messages per page; use Prev and Next to move between pages.
Searching and filtering
A message log fills up fast, so the page leads with a recipient search and two filters. They combine: a status filter plus a date range narrows to messages matching both.
Search by recipient. The search box matches an exact recipient number in E.164 format. Type the full number you sent to (e.g. +14155550100) to find every message addressed to it; it is an exact match, not a substring search.
Status. Filter to one or more statuses. Status is multi-select, so you can, say, show everything still in flight by selecting Accepted and Sent together. The options are Accepted, Sent, Delivered, Failed, and Received; Received belongs to inbound messages, which the channel does not support yet, so it matches nothing today.
Date. Filter by when the message was sent: pick a preset (last 3, 7, or 30 days) or choose a custom range from the calendar.
When a filter combination matches nothing, the page shows a no-results state with a Clear filters action to reset back to the full list.
Statuses
A message's status is where it currently sits in the lifecycle. A message walks from accepted toward a terminal receipt.
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Accepted | Bird admitted the message and is preparing to hand it to WhatsApp |
| Sent | Handed to WhatsApp; awaiting a delivery receipt |
| Delivered | WhatsApp confirmed delivery to the recipient |
| Failed | The message will not be delivered |
A read receipt is not a status: when a recipient reads a delivered message, Bird records a read_at timestamp and a whatsapp.read event on the message, and the delivery status stays delivered. Three more statuses exist on the wire but aren't emitted today: scheduled and canceled are reserved for a future scheduled-send feature, and received for inbound messages.
Inspecting a message
Click any row to open the message. Its header shows the template that produced it, the current status, the recipient, and the category badge, above two tabs:
- Events: a timeline of everything that happened to the message, in order, each with its timestamp: Accepted, Sent, Delivered, the read receipt if the recipient read it, or a failure with its error description. This is the same stream you can read with GET /v1/whatsapp/messages/{message_id}/events.
- Details: the message's metadata: its ID (with a copy button), the sender and recipient numbers, the template's slug, language, and category, the sent, delivered, and read timestamps, the error description on a message that didn't arrive, and any tags and metadata the send carried.
The same log over the API
Everything on this page reads from GET /v1/whatsapp/messages and its per-message sub-resources. The list takes the same filters the page exposes and more: status, an exact phone_number, a tag, and a created_after/created_before window. The timeline behind the Events tab is GET /v1/whatsapp/messages/{message_id}/events; WhatsApp events covers reading it programmatically.
Next steps
- Sending WhatsApp messages: the send payload behind every row
- WhatsApp events: the per-message lifecycle stream behind the timeline
- WhatsApp metrics: the aggregate view across every message here
- WhatsApp pricing: what a message costs, by destination and category