When someone submits one of your Strapi forms, you can have a formatted message land in a Telegram chat, group, or channel within seconds — no inbox to watch, no dashboard to refresh. FormFlow's Telegram notifications do this with a bot you own, and they are outbound-only: FormFlow never runs a server for you, installs a webhook, or reads incoming messages. This guide walks through the whole setup, from BotFather to your first live notification.

Telegram notifications are part of the FormFlow Strapi plugin and work on every tier, including the free one. What changes with the tier is how many bot connections you can keep at once: 1 on Free, 2 on Pro, 4 on Business. One connection is enough to notify as many forms as you like.

What you get

Every time a form receives a final submission, FormFlow sends one rich Telegram message built from a template you design — form title, the fields you choose, and their submitted values, formatted for a human to read at a glance.

A few things are worth knowing before you start, because they shape how you'll use the feature:

It's fire-and-forget. The message is sent after the submission is saved, on a background path. It never delays the visitor's response and never causes a submission to fail — if Telegram is down, the person filling out your form still gets their success screen.
It's one attempt. This first release sends once. There's no retry queue and no delivery-status badge — a timeout or a Telegram rate-limit is logged and moves on. That keeps the system simple and predictable; design your expected volume around it.
It's your bot, not ours. You create the bot, you hold the token, and you decide where it posts. FormFlow stores your credential encrypted (or just the name of an environment variable) and reads it only on the server.

Note

Telegram bots can't start a conversation with a person. For a private chat, the recipient has to message the bot or press Start first. Groups and channels just need the bot added.

Before you start

A Strapi v5 project with the FormFlow plugin installed — the free tier is enough
A Telegram account you can use to create a bot
A destination in mind — a personal chat, a team group, or a channel

Step 1 — Create and secure a bot

Open @BotFather in Telegram, run /newbot, and follow the prompts. When it finishes, it hands you a Bot API token. Copy it once and treat it like a password — anyone holding it controls the bot.

You paste that token into FormFlow once. It is held in Strapi's own plugin store, which is what lets you set the whole thing up from the admin panel without touching a config file or redeploying — and what lets you rotate the token later without editing a single form.

Warning

The token lives in your Strapi database, so your database and its backups now contain a credential. Protect them the way you would any other secret store, and keep the token out of source control, screenshots, and support tickets. If it ever leaks, revoke it in BotFather, use Replace token in FormFlow Settings, and send a fresh test.

Step 2 — Choose a destination

FormFlow accepts either a numeric chat ID (including the negative IDs Telegram uses for groups and channels) or a public @username. What the bot needs depends on where you're sending:

Destination	What to do
Private chat	The recipient messages the bot or presses Start first.
Group	Add the bot. Permission to send messages is enough.
Channel	Add the bot as an admin with permission to post messages.
Public group/channel	Use its `@username` — it's the simplest destination.

Grant the minimum the destination requires. A channel bot needs to post; it does not need to edit, delete, invite, or manage members.

Finding the chat ID

Public groups and channels are easy — use the @username. Private chats and groups have no username, only a numeric ID, and Telegram doesn't show it anywhere in the interface.

The quickest way to find it: forward any message from that chat to @RawDataBot. It replies with the raw JSON Telegram holds for that message, and the ID you want is forward_from_chat.id (or chat.id if you message the bot directly). Paste that number straight into FormFlow's Destination field — including the leading - for groups and channels, which is part of the ID.

Note

@RawDataBot is a third-party utility, not something we run. Use it to read an ID and then move on — don't forward anything sensitive to it.

Step 3 — Add a FormFlow connection

In the Strapi admin, go to FormFlow Settings → Telegram. The panel shows how many connections your licence allows and how many you've used.

The FormFlow Settings screen in Strapi, showing an empty Telegram connections panel with an Add connection button.

Click Add connection and give it a name you'll recognise later, plus the bot token from Step 1.
Click Validate. FormFlow asks Telegram who the bot is and shows you the name and @username it got back, so you can catch a pasted-wrong token before saving.
Save, then send the connection test. It uses fixed sample text and no real submission data, so it's safe to run anytime.

The Add Telegram connection dialog with a name and bot token filled in, showing a green "Bot validated" confirmation naming the bot it reached.

Once saved, the connection appears in the list with the bot it's bound to and a Connected status:

The Telegram connections table showing one saved connection, its bot, a credential stored in Strapi, and a Connected status.

One connection is reusable across every form, so rotating a token or renaming the connection never breaks the forms pointing at it. Extra connections are only for genuinely separate bots — a second brand, or a client you keep isolated.

Step 4 — Turn it on for a form

Open the form you want to wire up and go to its Notifications → Telegram tab.

The Telegram notification section of a FormFlow form, with a connection picker, destination field, message template editor, and live preview.

Select the connection and enter the destination from Step 2.
Design the message in FormFlow's focused editor — headings, bold, lists, and an Insert form variable picker for your form's fields. You never touch raw HTML or Bot API JSON, and the preview beside it shows what will actually arrive.
Send a test message to the real destination, then switch the toggle to Enabled and save the form.

Configured and switched on, it looks like this — connection chosen, destination set, template written, and Send test ready to prove the whole path before you rely on it:

The same Telegram notification section, now enabled, with a connection selected, a destination entered, and a completed message template.

Field variables reference stable field IDs, not labels — so renaming a field in the builder keeps your template intact. Delete a field a template still uses, and FormFlow shows a validation error instead of silently dropping in the wrong value.

Warning

Every field value you put in the template leaves your Strapi installation and is delivered to Telegram and everyone in the destination. Keep passwords, payment details, tokens, and other sensitive fields out of the message. FormFlow flags password fields, but data minimization is your call.

What FormFlow deliberately doesn't do

Part of trusting a notification integration is knowing its boundaries. FormFlow's Telegram support is outbound-only, on purpose:

It never installs or deletes a webhook, so it won't fight with an interactive bot backend that shares the same token.
It never reads incoming messages, commands, or updates.
It never changes your bot's profile or administers your chats.

If a bot you also use interactively stops receiving updates, look at webhook ownership elsewhere — FormFlow isn't touching it.

Troubleshooting

A few things that trip people up on the first run:

"Chat not found." Double-check the numeric ID or @username. For a private chat, confirm the recipient started the bot.
"Forbidden" or a permission error. Re-add the bot, or grant it permission to send (group) or post (channel). Make sure it hasn't been blocked.
The test works, but real submissions don't notify. Confirm the form is active, Telegram is enabled and saved, the connection is active for your license, and the event is a new final submission — draft saves and status changes intentionally don't fire.
Authentication error. Rotate the token, and make sure the environment variable exists in the Strapi process — not just your shell — then restart.

Wrap up

That's the whole loop: a bot from BotFather, a destination, one FormFlow connection, and a per-form template. New submissions now show up in Telegram, formatted and readable, without a server to babysit or a webhook to manage.

From here, point a second form at the same connection, or tailor each template to the team that reads it. If you're still choosing how to model your forms, the FormFlow tutorials walk through the plugin feature by feature.

Send Telegram notifications for Strapi form submissions