Conversation Participants
A participant can send and receive messages in a conversation. There are different types of participants. Depending on the type, the meaning of the participant ID changes:
| Participant type | Description | Meaning of participant ID |
|---|---|---|
| accessKey | A Bird API access key. This is what you'll commonly use when sending messages through the Conversations API | Access key ID |
| user | A user belonging to your workspace. This will typically represent customer service agents. | User ID |
| contact | A contact. This represents your customer, lead, or end-user. | Contact ID |
| flow | A Bird flow | Flow ID |
| bot | An AI LLM bot | Bot ID |
| connector | A campaign message | Connector ID |
| channel | Used by instagram echo messages | Channel ID |
| collaborationAutomation | Actions automatically executed by Action Rules | Action Rule ID |
Identifier Keys and Values
In Bird, a message recipient is identified by an "identifier key" and "identifier value" pair which depend on the platform of the channel being used:
- In an email channel, identifierKey is emailaddress and identifierValue is the email address of the recipient, e.g. john.doe@example.com
- In WhatsApp, RCS, SMS, and Viber, identifierKey is phonenumber and identifierValue is the phone number with an international call prefix, such as +31612345678
- Remaining channels have custom identifierKey and identifierValue formats that can be extracted from messages after an initial user interaction:
- In Facebook, an example identifier key is facebookid-164849000012345 and an example identifier value is 720197540012345
- In Apple Business Chat, an example identifier key is applebc-c72f4be3-2773-4ad4-86cf-6a6b4b3cb837 and an example identifier value is urn:mbid:c29tZSByYW5kb20gYmFzZTY0IGNvbnRlbnQ=
Some APIs allow you to refer to a conversation participant in two ways, either by specifying their participant ID, or by specifying their identifier key and identifier value pair.