---
title: Connect your Telegram group
description: Create your own Telegram bot, add it to your group as an admin, and let paying members join automatically — plus how to fix a bot that has stopped working.
---

Insy gates your Telegram group with a **bot**: the doorkeeper that lets in people with active access
and removes people whose access has ended. Setup is a one-time job with a few careful steps.

> **You bring your own bot**
>
> There is no shared or managed Insy bot. **You create your own bot in Telegram's @BotFather** and
> paste its token into Insy. The bot appears under your name in the group, which lets it act as an
> admin there — and means the token is yours to keep safe.

## Step 1 — Create a bot and get its token

1. **Open @BotFather in Telegram**

    Search for **@BotFather** (the official one, with the blue check) and start a chat.

2. **Create a new bot**

    Send `/newbot` and follow the prompts to name it and give it a username. BotFather then sends a
    **token** — a long string like `1234567890:ABCdef...`. That's the bot's password. Keep it
    private.

3. **Paste the token into Insy**

    On your community's Telegram screen, paste the token and save. Insy checks it's a real, working
    token before accepting — an invalid or mistyped one is rejected right away.

> **One bot, one community**
>
> A bot token can be connected to **only one community**. Reusing a token already set up on another
> community is refused. Give each community its own bot.

## Step 2 — Add the bot to your group as an admin

Once the token is accepted, Insy gives you a **link that opens Telegram** and walks you through
adding the bot. Use that link rather than adding the bot by hand — it carries the settings the bot
needs.

1. **Open the link and pick your group**

    The link lets you choose which group to add the bot to. Pick the private group you want to gate.

2. **Grant it admin rights**

    The bot must be an **administrator** with permission to **add users** and to **remove/restrict
    members** — exactly what it needs to invite paying members and remove those who lapse. The link
    requests these two; don't strip them afterwards.

3. **Wait for the confirmation**

    Once the bot lands in the group with the right rights, Insy detects it automatically and posts a
    short confirmation in the group. From that point the group is connected.

> **One group per community**
>
> Each community connects to a single Telegram group. Once a group is bound, adding the same bot to a
> different group won't silently move your community — the original connection stays until you
> deliberately disconnect and reconnect.

## Checking the connection

Your community's Telegram screen shows the current state: whether a token is saved, whether a group
has been detected, its title, and whether the connection is healthy. If anything is off, you'll see
it there first.

## How members get in

Members never need an invite from you personally — the bot handles it:

- **After paying**, a member receives their own private, single-use invite link. Opening it sends a
  join request, and the bot approves it because their access is active. Links expire, so they're
  meant to be used promptly.
- **Any time**, a member can message the bot with **`/invite`** for a fresh link — useful if the
  first expired or they joined on another device. With no active access, the bot tells them so
  instead of letting them in.
- Members can check their own standing with **`/me`**, **`/status`** or **`/membership`** — whether
  access is active and until when.

Because entry runs through join requests the bot approves, someone without an active membership
can't get in even if they obtain a link — the bot declines them.

## Fixing a broken or disconnected bot

If members suddenly can't join, or the connection shows as unhealthy, the cause is almost always
that **the bot was removed from the group or lost its admin rights**. Work through these in order:

1. **Confirm the bot is still in the group, as an admin**

    Open the group's member list. The bot should be there, marked as administrator, still holding
    the add-users and remove-members permissions. If it was kicked or demoted, that's the problem.

2. **Re-add or re-promote it**

    From the Telegram screen, use the reconnect link to add the bot back to the **same** group (or
    re-grant its admin rights if it's still a member). Re-adding it to the original group restores
    the existing connection — no need to start from scratch.

3. **Re-register the bot if needed**

    If the bot is present and an admin but still not reacting, the screen offers a re-register action
    that re-establishes the Telegram–Insy link. Run it, then test with a member.

> **Disconnecting is a clean break**
>
> Disconnecting removes the connection entirely — Insy stops managing the group and the bot stops
> taking instructions. Only do it if you're changing bots or groups on purpose. To reconnect, go
> through the setup above again.

> **Don't rotate the bot's token elsewhere**
>
> If you regenerate the token in @BotFather, the old one Insy holds stops working and the connection
> breaks. If you must rotate it, paste the new token into Insy afterwards.