🤖 Support Bot

Support Bot is a Telegram bot for feedback: every user who writes to the bot gets their own topic in your forum group, and admins answer right in the topic.

• Bot example: @nessshonSupportBot
• Linked group example: @nessshonSupportGroup

Features:

• Both ways. Messages, edits, replies and reactions reach the other side; forwards keep their source.
• Delivery. Undelivered messages are queued and sent later, in order; albums stay albums.
• Control. Block a user, turn on silent mode for a topic, see the user's details. New users pass a captcha.
• Languages. A file per language in locales; users pick theirs, the group has its own.

About Limits:

Specific limits are not specified in the documentation, but the community has shared some rough numbers.
• Limit on topic creation per minute ~20.
• Limit on the total number of topics ~1M.

Available bot commands

In the group topics:

• /ban - Block / unblock the user. The user's messages stop reaching the topic.
• /silent - Turn silent mode on / off. Messages from the topic don't reach the user.
• /delete - Delete a support message for the user. Reply with it to a message up to 48 hours old.
• /information - User details: ID, username, language, status, block and silent mode.

In the chat with the bot:

• /start - Restart the bot.
• /delete - Delete a message. Reply with it to your own message up to 48 hours old.
• /language - Change the language (only with more than one language).

A message deleted by hand stays on the other side: Telegram doesn't tell bots. Use /delete.

Usage

Preparation

1. Create a bot via @BotFather and save its token (BOT_TOKEN).
2. Create a group and enable topics in the group settings.
3. Add the bot to the group as an admin with the rights to manage topics, delete messages and pin messages.
4. Add What's my Telegram ID? to the group and save the group ID (BOT_GROUP_ID).
5. Optionally, edit the bot texts in locales and uncomment the locales lines in compose.yaml: the bot then reads the texts from the folder, not from the image.
6. Optionally, add a language the same way: copy en.toml to de.toml (the language code) and translate it.

Every message an admin writes in the user's topic goes to the user. Messages of anonymous admins are ignored, so that it is always clear who replied. On start the bot checks the group and stops with a clear error if the group ID is wrong, topics are off or the bot can't manage them.

Installation

You need your own server or you can rent one from a hosting provider. For this, check out the Recommended Hosting Provider section below.

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/nessshon/support-bot.git

2. Change into the bot directory:

   cd support-bot

3. Copy the environment variables file:

   cp .env.example .env

4. Configure the environment variables file:

   nano .env

5. Start the bot, the ready image is downloaded from GitHub:

   docker compose up -d

   Check that it started: docker compose logs -f bot.

Updating

docker compose pull
docker compose up -d

Environment Variables Reference

Here is a comprehensive reference guide for the environment variables used in the project:

Variable	Description	Example
BOT_TOKEN	Bot token, obtained from @BotFather	123456:qweRTY
BOT_DEV_ID	User ID of the bot developer, who gets error reports	123456789
BOT_GROUP_ID	Group ID where the bot operates	-100123456789
BOT_EMOJI_ID	The custom emoji ID for the group's topic.	5417915203100613993
BOT_GROUP_LANGUAGE	Optional. Language of everything the bot writes to the group, a file name from locales, en by default	ru
REDIS_HOST	The hostname or IP address of the Redis server	redis
REDIS_PORT	The port number on which the Redis server is running	6379
REDIS_DB	The Redis database number	0
REDIS_USERNAME	Optional. Redis ACL username	default
REDIS_PASSWORD	Optional. Redis password	p@ss:w/rd

Recommended Hosting Provider

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Contribution

We welcome your contributions! If you have ideas for improvement or have identified a bug, please create an issue or submit a pull request.

License

This repository is distributed under the MIT License. Feel free to use, modify, and distribute the code in accordance with the terms of the license.