Add WhatsApp, socials and a map

What you end up with

By the end of this you will have your real WhatsApp number, your Instagram, your Facebook page, one video and your business address stored on one agent. From then on, every build that agent runs is handed your real links along with an instruction to wire them up, instead of leaving a marked gap where they should be. The last section on this page is honest about how reliably that instruction is followed.

Five different things, one job done five times. The form is the same each time; what changes is the shape each field will accept, and a value in the wrong shape is refused on the spot. That refusal is most of the work, so most of this page is the shapes.

One thing this does not do, before you start: it changes nothing about a website you have already built. A connection is spent on the next build, not on the last one.

Before you start

An account

Signed in, with at least one agent set up.

Your WhatsApp number

With the country code. For a UK mobile that means 44 and no leading zero.

Your Instagram

The handle, or the address of your profile page.

Your Facebook page

The full web address of the page, not its name.

A video

One YouTube video, not a channel. Its watch address.

Your address

Street, town and postcode, in 120 characters or fewer.

What it costs

Nothing. Connecting is free; only sending a message costs credits.

Note. You do not need all five. Each one is stored on its own and connecting one does not require any of the others.

Where the form is

Every connection is made in the same place: the library of tools behind your agent, one row per thing, with a small form that opens under the row you pressed.

Getting to that library takes one step people miss, so follow this even if you have used the studio before. An agent you already have opens into its chat rather than its setup screen, and the library has a door in each of those rooms. The steps below take the shorter one. If you are on the setup screen instead, the panel headed Tools has a + Add tool button that opens the same window.

1. Sign in and open Agents in the sidebar of your dashboard.
2. Choose the agent you want these on. Connections belong to one agent and are not shared with your others.
3. You land in that agent's chat. Press the + beside the box you type in and choose Add tools from the little menu. A window headed Add tools opens over the screen.
4. Find the row you want. There is a search box at the top of the window, which beats scrolling — the library is grouped, and the five in this tutorial are not all in the same group. The table below says which group each one is in.
5. Press Connect on that row. A single field opens underneath it with the wording for that tool. The Add button beside it is a separate control and you do not need it.
6. Type or paste your value in, then press Connect or the Enter key. The button reads Saving while it goes, then Update.
7. Do the next one. The window stays open on purpose, because most people are setting up several in a row.

Tip. Connecting a tool also adds it and switches it on. You do not have to add it first and you do not have to find a second control afterwards. If you had added it and switched it off in an earlier session, connecting switches it back on.

Note. If a paste is refused, the reason appears under the field in red. It starts by naming the tool, then repeats the hint. Nothing is stored when that happens, and the value you typed stays in the box so you can correct it.

WhatsApp: the number in international form

The field is headed Your WhatsApp number and the hint under it asks for the number customers should message, with the country code. That last part is not a suggestion, and it is the one thing on this page most likely to go wrong quietly.

Here is what happens to what you type. Everything that is not a digit is thrown away first — spaces, brackets, dashes, the plus sign. What is left has to be between 6 and 15 digits or the paste is refused. Those digits are then put straight after wa.me and that becomes the chat link on every WhatsApp button the site builds.

Nothing checks that the digits are a real number, and nothing checks that they start with a country code. A UK mobile typed the way you would write it on a van passes the check and produces a link to a number that does not exist.

1. Start with 44.
2. Drop the zero at the front of your mobile number.
3. Type the remaining ten digits. Spaces are fine — they are removed for you.

Tip. The check counts digits and nothing else. That means a wrong number is stored silently, and the place it shows up is the phone of a customer who wanted to message you. Press the button on the finished site yourself before you hand the address to anybody.

Note. The faint example inside the box is not a UK number. Ignore it and use your own.

Instagram: the handle, or the address of your profile

The field is headed Your Instagram handle, and the hint says a handle or a profile address will both work. That is true, with one trap in it.

A handle is accepted with or without the at sign, and it is put into lower case before it is stored, which changes nothing about where the link goes. Letters, numbers, full stops and underscores are allowed, up to thirty characters. A space or a hyphen is refused.

If what you paste is an address on instagram.com, the part straight after the slash is lifted out of it and used as the handle. That is what makes pasting your profile page work. It is also what makes pasting a post go wrong: the part straight after the slash in a link to a post is not your name, so the link that ends up on your site points at nothing of yours.

• Your handle, with or without the at sign: accepted.
• The address of your profile page: accepted, and the handle is taken out of it.
• A link to one post or one reel: accepted, and wrong. What gets stored is the word in the address, not your handle.
• Anything with a space, a hyphen or a slash where the handle should be: refused.

Note. Whatever it stores becomes the address behind every Instagram link on the site — in the header, in the footer, and in any section inviting people to see recent work. So one wrong paste is wrong everywhere at once, which is worth two seconds of checking.

Facebook: the address of the page, not its name

The field is headed Your Facebook page and the hint asks for the full web address of your page. It means it. A page name on its own is refused, because there is no reliable way to turn a name into an address.

Only two hosts are accepted: facebook.com and fb.com. Their subdomains count too, so the mobile version of the address works. Any other host is refused outright, including a shortener and including a web address of your own that redirects to your page.

It has to be a secure address. If you leave the start off and type only the domain and your page name, https is added for you and the paste is accepted. If you type http yourself, it is refused rather than corrected — that is a strict reading rather than an unhelpful one, and retyping it as https is the fix.

• Your page address copied out of the address bar: accepted.
• The same thing with the front of it missing: accepted, and completed for you.
• The same thing starting with http rather than https: refused.
• A web address on any other host: refused.
• Anything longer than 200 characters: refused, whatever host it is on.

Note. What it stores becomes the Facebook link in the footer and beside your other contact routes. The address is tidied into its standard form when it is saved, so it may not read back exactly as you typed it. That is normal.

YouTube: one video, not a channel

The field is headed Your video link and the hint asks for the video to feature — a watch link. One video is what this connector is for, and the sentence it adds to the build says to embed that exact video.

The check is the same as Facebook's with different hosts: a secure address on youtube.com or youtu.be, or a subdomain of either, up to 200 characters. The short share address and the long watch address both pass. A privacy-mode address on a different host does not, even though it plays the same video.

The check cannot tell a video from a channel, because they sit on the same host. Paste a channel address and it is accepted, and the build is then told to embed a channel as though it were a video. Nothing warns you.

1. Open the video itself on YouTube, not your channel page.
2. Copy the address, either from the address bar or from the share button.
3. Paste the whole thing in. Extra parts on the end, like a start time, do no harm.

Note. If you want a channel linked rather than a video embedded, this is the wrong connector for it and there is not a right one. Ask for the link in the message you send when you build.

Your address: what it stores, and what it will not build

The field is headed Your business address and the hint says it is shown on the site and used for directions. This is the one free-text field of the five. It takes ordinary words, needs at least four characters, and is cut to 120 characters — quietly, with no warning that anything was lost. Line breaks are turned into spaces, so pasting a multi-line address off a letterhead is fine.

What the build is handed is your address, word for word, marked as a fact you reported rather than as an instruction. It goes into a location section along with your opening hours and directions.

It does not put a map on your website, and the name of the row makes that easy to misread. The instruction that goes out with it tells the build not to drop in a third-party map that loads before the visitor has agreed to it, and the wider instructions refuse any web address that is not already in the site's files. Between those two, an embedded map is not something a build will produce. What you get is your address, your hours and directions written on the page.

Tip. Count your characters if your address is long. A unit number, a business park, a street, a town and a postcode can pass 120 without feeling long, and what goes over the line is dropped rather than refused — so the failure looks like a shortened address on your finished site rather than an error on the form.

Note. Two of the five store something about you in the real world rather than a link: the address, and the WhatsApp number. Our privacy page says so in as many words. The other three are a handle, a page address and a video address. All five are removed the moment you press Disconnect on the form.

How to know it worked

There are two separate questions here and they have two separate answers. The first is whether the value was stored. The second is whether the finished website actually carries it, and only the second one matters to a customer.

1. Look at the row you just connected. There is now a small dot beside the name, and the button that said Connect says Connected.
2. Close the window, and press Back to setup if you are still in the chat. In the panel headed Tools the row is listed with its switch on, and the Connect button that was on it has gone. That is the value stored.
3. Open the site you want built this way and look at the name beside the box you type into. If it says Grafter, none of this will be used — choose your agent there first.
4. Send one turn asking for the site, or for the sections these belong in.
5. Publish it, then open the published address on your phone and press the WhatsApp button. Check the Instagram and Facebook links go where you expect, and that the video is the right one.

Tip. A link out of the page cannot open in the preview or on a share link. Both show your site sealed off from the page around it, so pressing a WhatsApp button there does nothing at all. That is expected rather than a broken build, and it is why the last step above says publish first.

Note. If a value is stored but the built site shows a marked gap where the link should be, read the next section before you send another turn. That one is ours.

What this does not do

The instructions that go with every build refuse any web address that is not already in the site's files. Your connected link is not in the site's files — you pasted it into an agent, which is a different place. So one request carries your real link and a rule against using it, and which of the two a build follows is not decided anywhere.

The practical result: a connected link sometimes comes back wired up and sometimes comes back as a clearly marked gap, on the same connection, with nothing changed in between. This is our fault rather than yours, and it is a bug rather than a setting you have missed. Read the links on the built site before you publish it, and say so if they are wrong.

• It changes nothing about a site you have already built. Nothing here edits a website; the next build turn does.
• It only counts on turns that agent builds. A turn sent while the name beside the box says Grafter carries none of it.
• A tool switched off in the panel keeps its stored value and sends nothing.
• Connections belong to one agent. Another agent of yours knows nothing about them.
• A WhatsApp button is a link to WhatsApp. Messages arrive on your phone, not in the Leads panel on your dashboard.
• Nothing is verified. Nobody checks that the number is yours, that the page exists, or that the video plays.

Common questions

Do I have to add the tool as well as connecting it?

No. Connecting adds it to the agent and switches it on in the same act, including switching one back on that you had turned off before.

Does connecting cost credits?

No. Saving a connection, adding a tool and switching one on or off are all free. Only sending a message costs credits.

How do I take a connection off again?

Open the same form and press Disconnect. That control only appears once something is stored. The value is removed and the site stops being wired to it on the next build.

Can two of my agents share one connection?

No. Every connection is held on the one agent you saved it against, and there is no way to copy it across.

It refused my number and I am sure it is right.

Count the digits after everything else is stripped out. Fewer than six or more than fifteen is the only reason a number is refused, and a number written with an extension or a note beside it can land outside that range.

My address was saved but the finished site shows less of it.

It is cut at 120 characters when it is stored, with nothing said about it. Shorten it yourself — a county name and the word Limited are usually the first things that can go.