BOT-panel: launching a Telegram bot with AI and running it day to day

BOT-panel is our control panel for Telegram bots: one place where your bots, your conversations with customers, the AI agent, broadcasts and enquiries all live. The customer writes in Telegram, you see it in a browser window, you reply from there, and you do not hold a phone in your hand all day. Below is how to launch a bot and run it.

Step 1. The bot and access to the panel

The bot itself is created by Telegram: it has a service bot called BotFather which issues the name, the username and an access key — a long string known as the token. We register the bot in the panel with that key, after which the bot starts receiving messages.

Two rules about the token worth learning on day one:

• The token is your bot. Whoever holds it can write as the bot and read what people write to it. Do not forward it in chats and do not put it in shared documents.
• Reissuing the key instantly breaks everything built on it — broadcasts, integrations, the assistant on your website. Do it only deliberately and together with us.

Access to the panel is opened by us: each member of staff gets their own account, with access only to the bots they need.

Step 2. Commands and the bot menu

The first thing a customer sees is /start and the command menu. Each command is a row in the panel: what the customer asks and what the bot answers. The text is written and changed without a developer.

An image can be attached to a command: the bot then sends the picture with a caption as one message rather than two. The caption has a limit of around a thousand characters; if the text is longer, the picture goes on its own and the text follows. That is not a bug but how Telegram itself behaves.

There is also a separate «Offers» showcase: cards with an image, text and a button that the customer opens with a single command. Handy for seasonal promotions — it is changed in the panel in a minute.

Step 3. The AI agent

The agent answers customers around the clock. You enable it like this:

1. Pick the bot and open the «AI agent» section.
2. Upload the prompt — a description of who it is and how it speaks. Either as text, or as a link to your site so it can take the facts from there.
3. Set the tone of the answers and the topic boundaries.
4. Enable the agent and restart the bot.
5. From then on, watch the conversations in the «Chats» section.

The most important item here is the fourth, not the third. From experience: a beautifully written prompt with no boundaries produces a bot that will happily discourse on anything — and one day promises a customer something you do not do. Boundaries are stated plainly: what we answer, what we do not, and what we do when a question falls outside.

If you have a catalogue of products or services, the agent is connected to it separately: it then names real items, prices and availability instead of guessing. Availability and prices come from your export, so they update along with it.

Step 4. Chats: where the work happens

The «Contacts» section opens the default book — everyone who has ever written to the bot. The conversations themselves are visible from there too.

• You can reply straight from the panel — in text and in voice messages. Telegram on a phone is not needed for it.
• The history is kept and available at any moment: what somebody promised a customer six months ago is visible without the word «apparently».
• Every conversation gets a score — how calm and satisfied the customer sounded. It is not a rating of the manager but a hint about where to look first: you read the red chats, not the green ones.
• Escalation. When a customer is unhappy or asks outright for a human, a notification flies to the manager in Telegram — straight away, not the next morning in an export.

Make it a rule to review the low-scoring chats once a week. That is fifteen minutes which reveal both the holes in the prompt and your customers' real objections.

Step 5. Broadcasts

A broadcast is assembled in the «Tasks» section:

1. Pick the bot you are writing as.
2. Compose the message: text, image, buttons.
3. Choose the audience — all subscribers, a separate contact book, or a list.
4. Set the time: now or scheduled.
5. Send.

Separate contact books are made by copying from the main one: customers in one city, partners, attendees of an event. Sending everything to everyone is the fastest way to teach people to leave the bot.

Step 6. Enquiries and orders

Everything the customer confirms in the bot can be handed onwards immediately:

• To your CRM — the panel sends the confirmed order to the external system with items, quantities and prices.
• To a working Telegram group — so the team sees the enquiry where they already are.
• To a spreadsheet or an automation scenario — when the processing is more than «pass it on and forget».

Delivery does not stay silent: every attempt is logged, a failed one is retried, and if the external system was down for an hour the enquiries will not vanish.

What else can be switched on in the panel

• Staff authentication — so that internal commands are visible only to your own people, not to anyone who found the bot.
• Time tracking and geolocation — clocking in and out right inside the bot.
• Document approvals — the document reaches the responsible person in Telegram with approval buttons.
• Reminders and a notebook — personal reminders for staff.
• A loyalty programme — a bonus card with a barcode and the bonus balance from your accounting system.
• Calls — a log of incoming calls and outbound campaigns; on the higher plans the AI agent does the talking.
• A website assistant — the same agent in a widget on your site, with the same prompt and catalogue. It answers in text and by voice.

What it costs

There are six plans, from free to negotiated:

• Light — free: one bot, chat with customers, broadcasts, reminders. Enough to test the idea.
• Start — 400 UAH a month: up to three bots.
• Pro — 1,200 UAH: the AI agent, search across products and customers, API access.
• Business — 4,500 UAH: calls, staff authentication, document approvals.
• MAXimus — 9,000 UAH: up to five bots, more call minutes, time tracking, loyalty.
• Enterprise — by agreement: several AI agents and bespoke integrations.

It is almost always worth starting with the free plan: a bot with two commands and live replies from the panel already shows how many people write in Telegram at all, and about what.

Three mistakes of the first month

1. Switching the AI on and never opening «Chats» again. For the first week you read the agent daily — that is where you see it inventing things.
2. Broadcasting to the whole base with no reason. The unsubscribes after a message like that cost more than any promotion.
3. Keeping the token in a shared chat. The key to the bot is the key to the correspondence with your customers.

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The panel opens at bot.sgt.com.ua, where there are short video guides as well. If a capability you need is missing, write to info@sgt.com.ua: we write the panel ourselves, so what is needed gets built rather than being «out of scope».