WhatsApp

Customers who live in WhatsApp can call you there too. They open your business chat, tap the call button, and your assistant picks up — same assistant, same number, no app switch for them.

What it is#

WhatsApp calling adds a second way to reach the assistant on a phone number you already have with OnCore. Once the number is enabled for WhatsApp, customers can call you from inside the WhatsApp app — no dialling, just a tap in the chat — and the same assistant that answers your phone line takes the call. The number keeps answering ordinary phone calls exactly as before; WhatsApp calling sits alongside, and the call travels over the internet rather than the phone network.

What you can do with it#

• Meet customers where they already are — for many customers WhatsApp is the phone; the call button in your chat now reaches a live assistant instead of ringing out.
• Serve callers abroad without international dialling — a customer in another country taps to call over the internet instead of dialling a foreign number.
• Keep one assistant across phone and WhatsApp — both routes land on the assistant behind the same number, so its behaviour, greeting, and tasks stay in one place.
• Enable numbers at scale through the API — start an onboarding with a single request, hand the business owner a signup link, and follow progress by webhook until calling is live; the owner never handles codes or verification screens.
• Tell WhatsApp calls apart in your reporting — each call is announced to your systems with a whatsapp source marker, alongside the same call records you get for phone calls.

How to set it up#

Everything runs through OnCore's REST API. You start an onboarding for one of your phone numbers, which returns a single-use signup link; the number's owner opens it, authenticates with Meta, and approves the connection — OnCore handles everything after that, from verifying the number to switching calling on. You can follow progress by polling or subscribe to webhook events that fire as the number completes and goes live. The step-by-step flow is in the WhatsApp onboarding guide, with the full endpoint specification in the WhatsApp API reference.

Limits & FAQ#

• The signup link is single-use and valid for 15 minutes; if it expires or the owner abandons it, you simply start again — nothing is left in a broken state.
• The number must already be answering ordinary voice calls: enablement is confirmed by an automated verification call to the line, so a number with no inbound voice routing can't complete onboarding.
• A brand-new WhatsApp Business Account can sit below Meta's calling tier; the number is parked as tier_pending and calling switches on once the account's limit rises — you're notified by webhook when it completes.
• WhatsApp calls can't be transferred to your team — keep lines whose flows depend on call transfers on the regular phone channel.
• This feature is WhatsApp calling — typed WhatsApp chat messages to the number are not answered by the assistant.

Is it the same assistant as our phone line? Yes. WhatsApp calls to the number reach the assistant assigned to that number, and regular phone calls continue to work unchanged.

What does the caller see in WhatsApp? Your business display name — you request it during onboarding and Meta reviews it. Once approved, calling is live end-to-end under that name.

What does the business owner have to do? Only the Meta approval: they open the signup link, sign in, and consent. They never see a phone-number or verification-code screen. Note the Meta consent screen shows the platform provider's registered name — Meta does not white-label technology providers.

How do these calls show up in our reporting? Like phone calls: the start-of-call event carries call_source: "whatsapp" (see the assistant-request webhook), and each call delivers an end-of-call report and appears in your call history with its transcript and summary.