Send from your own WhatsApp number

Every school already sends WhatsApp. The messages leave from the platform's number with your school's name written into the message itself, and there is nothing to set up. Connecting a number of your own changes where a message comes from, not what it says: families see your name in WhatsApp, and sign-in codes land in the same thread as your class reminders. A school that already runs its own Meta app can paste credentials instead, behind “Advanced: enter credentials yourself”.

Connecting the number

1. 1Open “Settings” and then “WhatsApp”. The first card, “Your WhatsApp sender”, is what you have today and what you keep if you stop here.
2. 2Press “Connect with Meta” and finish Meta's window: sign in, then either register a new number or select one your business already uses. Allow pop-ups, and press it once only, because a second window races the first onto the same number.
3. 3If that number already carries two-step verification, “Enter your two-step PIN” appears. Type the six-digit PIN your business set, then “Finish connecting”. Meta never lets us read a PIN back, so there is no way round it.
4. 4Under “Message templates”, press “Submit for approval”. Connecting submits nothing on its own.
5. 5Use “Test connection” later to check that the saved credentials still work.

Getting your templates approved

WhatsApp approves message templates per business account, so yours begins with none of ours. The “Submit for approval” button sends the whole set, in all three languages, onto your account and spends its review quota, which is why connecting leaves it to you and a rejection is yours to answer. Each one reads “In review” until Meta decides, and “Show details” lists the verdicts with a reason beside anything “Rejected”. You need not sit on “Refresh status”: Meta's decisions reach the page by themselves, and the system re-reads your account before it gives up on WhatsApp.

Going back to our number