WhatsApp Flows explained: forms, bookings and lead capture in chat

Ask a customer for a name, a date, a service and a phone number in plain chat and you will get the answers one at a time, out of order, with a "sorry, what was the second question?" somewhere in the middle. Everyone who has taken a booking by message knows the feeling.

WhatsApp Flows are Meta's answer to that. A Flow is a short, structured form that opens inside the conversation, so the customer fills in fields instead of typing replies, taps Submit, and lands back in the chat. This guide explains what Flows are, what they can collect, how the answers reach you, and the cases where you should not use one.

What WhatsApp Flows are

Meta describes Flows as a way to build structured interactions for business messaging. A Flow is made of screens. Each screen holds components, such as a text box, a date picker or a list of choices, and ends with a button that moves the customer on or finishes the Flow.

The customer sees it as a sheet that slides up over the chat. They don't leave WhatsApp, they don't open a browser, and they don't create an account anywhere.

Meta's own examples are lead generation, insurance quotes, purchase interest and personalised offers. In practice small businesses use the same format for bookings, callback requests, event sign-ups, order lookups and feedback.

What a Flow can collect

Meta's component reference lists the building blocks. The ones you will use most:

• Text input and text area for names, emails, phone numbers and longer notes. The label on a text input is capped at 20 characters, so questions have to be short, with a helper line underneath for detail.
• Dropdown, radio buttons and checkboxes for choices. Radio buttons and checkboxes take up to 20 options; a dropdown takes up to 200 without images.
• Date picker for a preferred day.
• Opt-in for a clear yes to a statement such as "I agree to get updates on WhatsApp".
• Images and text for headings, short explanations and a picture.

A single screen can hold up to 50 components, but please don't. Meta's best practices say to keep a Flow short, aiming for tasks of no more than five minutes, and to keep choices under about ten per screen. Our advice is blunter: if the form needs a scroll, split it into two screens.

Building one: the builder, the starters and the JSON

Avox has a Flow builder in the dashboard. You open Flows, click Create Flow, pick a starting point and work through three steps: Type, Name and Content. A live phone preview sits beside the editor, and Validate checks your Flow with Meta before you publish.

Here is the honest part. Flows are defined in Meta's Flow JSON, and the editor in Avox is a JSON editor. If JSON is new to you, don't start from a blank page. Avox includes premade Flows in three groups:

• Plain forms that work at once: collect purchase interest, get feedback, send a survey, customer support, request a callback, request a quote, return or exchange, sign up for updates, job application.
• Live answers, where Avox works out numbers while the customer fills the form in, such as a loan EMI calculator or an instant price estimate.
• Live with your tables, which read and save rows in your Avox tables: free appointment slots, event seats, order status, stock checks, today's menu, leads, feedback.

Change the wording, publish, and you have a working Flow. Our step-by-step Flow post and the Create a Flow walkthrough go through each screen of the wizard.

With a live endpoint, or without

Some Flows only collect answers. Others need live data while the customer is filling them in: which times are free tomorrow, whether an item is in stock.

For live data a Flow talks to an endpoint, a web address that answers each step. Meta's guidance is plain: prefer Flows without one when you don't need live data, because they are faster to build.

With Avox you have two routes. The premade live Flows use Avox's own endpoint and read your tables, so you don't run a server. Or you point a Flow at an endpoint on your own server, which means generating a key pair in the builder, registering the public key with Meta and writing code that decrypts Meta's requests. Avox gives you a starting snippet, but this is developer work. The Avox Flows documentation has the full steps.

How a Flow reaches a customer, and where the answers go

Meta allows two ways to send a Flow: inside a conversation as an interactive message, or as a message template with a Flow button, which a business can start itself. In Avox, an automation's Use Flows action sends a published Flow with an intro line and a button label such as "Book now". It costs 3 automation credits each time, and you can also send one through the Avox API. Because it goes out as an ordinary message, it needs the 24-hour window to be open; our plain-English guide to the 24-hour window explains why.

When the customer submits, WhatsApp delivers their answers to you as a message. Meta notes that this message doesn't say which Flow it came from, so the sender has to tag it. Avox does that for the Flows it sends. You then see the answers in your logs, and a Flow submitted automation trigger lets you act on them: tag the contact, add a note, notify the team, or add a row to a table.

When not to use a Flow

Flows are good at small, structured jobs. They are the wrong tool for several others.

• Open conversations. If the customer's question is "do you do dog-friendly rooms?", a form is a worse answer than a person.
• Long forms. Twelve questions is a survey nobody finishes. Ask three, then follow up in chat.
• Customers on WhatsApp Web. Meta says Flows are not supported on companion devices such as WhatsApp Web, and need Android 6.0 or iOS 12 or newer. Keep a typed fallback.
• Sensitive details. By default, everything the customer enters comes back in the response, except password fields. Meta offers a sensitive property to keep other fields out of the response message. Better still: don't ask for what you don't need.
• Quick edits. In Avox, a published Flow isn't edited in place. You create a new Flow with the changes and deprecate the old one, and your plan sets how many Flows you can have.

Meta also says you must verify your business and keep message quality high before you can send Flows. Check the current rules on Meta's page, because they change.

Questions people ask

Is a WhatsApp Flow the same as a Google Form?

It does the same kind of job, but the form opens inside the chat and the answers come back as a WhatsApp message. The customer never leaves the app, which is the whole point.

Do I need a developer to build WhatsApp forms?

Not for the premade Flows. You edit wording and publish. You need a developer if you want your own server as the data endpoint, or if you want to change the Flow JSON in ways the premade ones don't cover.

Can a Flow take payment?

Not inside the Flows Avox builds today. They collect information. If a booking needs a payment, an Avox automation can send a payment link made by a connected payments app, as a separate message after the Flow.

Where do I see what customers submitted?

In the conversation and your logs, and in any table or automation you've connected to the Flow. The Flow's page in Avox shows its status and, for endpoint Flows, recent traffic.

Your next step: open the Flows page, pick the premade Request a callback form, and send it to your own phone. Ten minutes from now you'll know whether Flows suit your business.