How to create Telegram bot (BotFather)

What it is for: A Telegram bot is a special account that ePulz.io sends messages about your monitors to. You receive them on your phone or computer within a second. Creation is free and takes about 3 minutes.

What you will need:

Telegram app on your phone or PC (download if you do not have it)
An existing Telegram account (registration via phone number)
About 3 minutes

Step 1: Find "BotFather"

BotFather is the official Telegram bot that creates other bots. A little absurd, but that is how it is designed.

Open the Telegram app
At the top of the app click the search magnifier (Search)
Type BotFather
In the list of results look for BotFather with the blue verification checkmark (official account)
Click it, the chat opens

Warning: There are many fraudulent bots with a similar name. Use only the one with the blue verification checkmark. The real one has the username @BotFather (capital B and F).

Step 2: Start the conversation

In the chat with BotFather click Start (or write /start)
BotFather sends you a welcome message with a menu of commands

Step 3: Create a new bot

Write the command /newbot and send
BotFather asks: "Alright, a new bot. How are we going to call it?"
Write the public name of your bot - for example My monitoring alerts or ePulz.io alerts. You will see this name in the chat list.
BotFather asks for the username: "Good. Now let's choose a username..."

BotFather chat - /newbot command — Conversation with @BotFather when creating a new bot

Write the username - it must end with bot and be unique. For example: my_monitoring_alerts_bot, companyXY_uptime_bot. If it is already taken, BotFather tells you and you try another.

Step 4: Copy your token

After successful creation, BotFather sends a message that contains the HTTP API token. It looks like this:

Done! Congratulations on your new bot. You will find it at
t.me/my_monitoring_alerts_bot. ...

Use this token to access the HTTP API:
1234567890:AAEx1y2z3a4b5c6d7e8f9g0h1i2j3k4l5m6n7

BotFather - HTTP API token — Bot token - copy it and store it safely

IMPORTANT: This token is like a password for your bot. Never publish it publicly, do not push to git, do not send via email. If someone obtains it, they can control your bot. Copy it and save it into a password manager (1Password, Bitwarden, KeePass).

Step 5: Optionally - add a description and an image

You can customize the bot:

/setdescription - the bot's description (short)
/setabouttext - the "about" section (longer)
/setuserpic - the profile image

It is not mandatory, the bot works even without these tweaks.

Done. You have your own Telegram bot.

You have the token saved. Now you need one more piece of information - the Chat ID, so that the bot knows whom to send messages to. We show that in the next step.

Next step:

Get the Chat ID where the bot should send messages.

How to get the Chat ID ->