Open Automations in the left sidebar and pick the Capture tab, third along. Its subtitle is the whole idea — Entry links and QR codes that bring people into a conversation — each one tags where the contact came from. Behind each link is an ordinary automation: someone opens the chat, a welcome message goes out, and a tag naming the source is written onto the contact. Because it is an ordinary automation, everything the Workflows editor can do is available to it afterwards.
Creating a capture link
New capture link sits at the top right of the tab and opens a short dialog. Two of its fields fill themselves in from the first one, so work down the form in order.
Name the source
Source name is where the link will live, not what it does — the placeholder gives the idea: e.g. Packaging, Instagram bio, Storefront. Typing here also fills in the code word and the source tag below, so start with this field.
Pick the channel
Channel lists your connected WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram accounts and nothing else — a Telegram or email account cannot carry a capture link. The channel decides the shape of the link you get.
On WhatsApp, add the number
Choosing a WhatsApp account adds one more field: WhatsApp business number (digits only, with country code). It is used to build the wa.me link, and Create link stays disabled until you fill it.
Check the code word and the tag
Code word and Source tag arrive derived from the source name: Instagram bio becomes the code word
INSTAGRAM-BIOand the tagsrc-instagram-bio. Both stay editable — but editing the source name again re-derives both and discards your edit, so settle the source name first and adjust these two after.Write the greeting and create
Welcome message arrives with a default you can replace: Hi! 👋 Great to have you here. Tell me what you're looking for and I'll help right away. Click Create link and the automation is built, bound to the account you picked, and listed on the tab.
The toast that confirms the creation is also the warning: Capture link created — publish the automation to activate it. The link and the QR are real and shareable the moment they appear, but the flow behind them is a Draft — scan it now and nobody is greeted and nothing is tagged. Open it and press Set Live before that QR goes onto anything printed.
The link, the QR and the tag
Each capture link is a row on the tab: its channel icon, its name, a Live or Draft pill, the link written out in full, and the QR image rendered beside it. Three buttons sit under the link — Copy link, Download QR, and Open, which takes you into the automation in the Workflows editor. Before you have made any, the tab reads No capture links yet. Create one and put it on your packaging, bio, or storefront.
| Channel | The link you get | What identifies the source |
|---|---|---|
| wa.me/<number>?text=<code word> | The code word itself, sent as the visitor's first message. | |
| Facebook (Messenger) | m.me/<handle>?ref=<source> | A ref carried by the link. The visitor never sees or types it. |
| ig.me/m/<handle>?ref=<source> | The same ref, arriving in the Instagram inbox. |
The QR beside each row encodes exactly that link and nothing else — there is no redirect and no counting hop of ours in between. That is also why it cannot expire or be re-pointed later: it is not a short link we control, it is the chat address itself. Download QR saves it as a plain black-on-white PNG you can drop straight into artwork. The flip side of that simplicity: because the QR is the link, any change to the link means printing a new code.
The last step of the generated flow writes the Source tag onto the contact, so src-packaging and src-storefront become two things you can filter on in Contacts, build a segment from, or enrol a sequence with. That tag is how you tell one entry point from another later on — the tab itself keeps no scan count — so give each link its own tag even when two of them greet people identically.
Why WhatsApp is the one to think about
The hint under Code word says it plainly: On WhatsApp this is the pre-filled message that fires the automation; on Messenger and Instagram it travels invisibly in the link. On Messenger and Instagram the source rides in the link's own ref, so the visitor never sees it and nothing they type matters. WhatsApp has no such carrier. The wa.me link simply pre-fills the chat box with your code word, and that text — whatever the person leaves in the box — is what the trigger matches on.
Two things follow from the code word being an ordinary message. A code word that reads like a common phrase will fire the flow for people who never touched your link. And somebody who clears the pre-filled box before sending gets no greeting at all, because there is nothing left to match. Keep it short, distinctive and unlikely — the derived INSTAGRAM-BIO shape is a good default precisely because nobody types it by hand.
Three states that look broken and are not
- The pill says Draft. The flow exists but was never switched on. Press Open, then Set Live. Nothing behind the link runs until you do, and the link will not tell you — it opens the chat quite happily either way.
- The row shows a sentence instead of a link. It reads No channel bound yet — open the automation and pick one to get the link. There is no link to show because there is nothing to build one from. The wizard fills both in for you, so a row in this state is normally one you wired by hand in the Workflows editor: a Messenger or Instagram trigger with no account linked, or a WhatsApp trigger with no number saved. Open it, supply the missing half, and the link and QR appear.
- It greeted the first visitor and ignored the same person's second visit. That is the ordinary trigger rule, not a fault: a trigger fires only the first time it matches for a given contact. A returning customer scanning the same QR gets nothing unless you open the trigger and turn on Fire every time.
Capture lists every trigger in your account of the three entry-point kinds — QR code / ref link, Instagram referral link and WhatsApp link — not only the ones this wizard built. A flow you wired by hand in the Workflows editor shows up here too, with its link and QR rendered the same way. The tab has no delete: to remove a row, delete its automation from the Workflows list.
Frequently asked
Yes, and you should. Open takes you into the flow, where the greeting is an ordinary Send Message node you can rewrite, add to, or branch. Editing it never touches the link, so the printed code keeps working.
Only the ones that change the link itself, because the QR is the link: the WhatsApp number, the code word on a WhatsApp link, or the ref on a Messenger or Instagram link. The welcome message, the source tag and everything else you add to the flow are all outside the link.
No. The three link shapes are three different doors, and the automation behind one is bound to a single connected account. Create one capture link per channel. If you want to compare them later, give each its own source tag.
In Contacts, like anyone else who messages you — a capture link does not create a separate list. What it adds is the source tag, which is what lets you tell a packaging scan from a storefront scan months later.
Last updated August 25, 2026 · Automations
