Saving pictures received from users through Telegram

#1

Hi!
I need some help here about Telegram bots and getting pictures from users of the bot.

I can get an picture or video from a user using a trigger. Then Telegram provides a URL (GetFile method) which will be valid for about 1 hour. After that, the file URL will not work any more :cry:

Therefore, I want to save that image/video somewhere (not the link but the file) so that it could be used by a support department.

Any idea?
I tried Google Drive but it saves the URL only.
And yes, I read your other answers… therefore my question is: which is the service or code (inside a Flow) necessary to transform a URL into a file?
Thank you.

#2

Hello FlowXO,
I saved this situation using Zapier email parser. I details my steps for other readers:

  1. I include the Telegram picture link/URL inside the email body sent from FlowXO to a Zapier email parser account.
  2. The parser does what it has to do, and converts the URL line into a Tag
  3. Then I use the Zapier SMTP service to include such tag into the attachments field.
    Zapier SMTP does allow URL attachments… And our support dept. receives the email with the picture the way they want to.

My question now is: Is there any reason why Flowxo omits the attachment field (limited to a URL) in its SMTP service? Your GMail support also omits that field.

Any positility to include them in short? Any alternative solution?
Thank you

1 Like
(Karen Barker) #3

Hi Kiko,

Unfortunately I can’t think of any alternative solution to do this with. Flow XO isn’t designed to do file handling.

The Zapier solution is one I’ve seen customers use previously for this problem and it’s great that you’ve found an alternative solution. My only other thoughts were going to be a manual process if you could find some file handling software that could manipulate the link as soon as it’s sent and store to somewhere like google docs, dropbox or send via email straight into your support team.

As an FYI the other messenger platforms we support don’t expire the link to the files and so you can just email the link to the file, store it in a database etc.

I will raise the issue of email attachments on the roadmap but obviously there’s no saying whether this will be a feature added in the future or not.