Team Telegram Assistant

Getting your team to actually use a new tool is like herding cats—unless the tool lives where they already chat.

Why Put an Agent in Telegram?

Your team already lives in Telegram. Group chats, voice memos, quick questions, lunch plans—it’s all there. Hermes Agent turns that same space into a work assistant. No new apps to install, no dashboards to learn. Just message the bot like you would a colleague.

What You Get Out of the Box

Once connected, your Hermes bot can:

• Transcribe voice memos—send a voice note, get back text
• Handle images and files—drop a screenshot, ask for analysis
• Run scheduled tasks—get daily reports right in the chat
• Work in group chats—the whole team can ask questions together

Step 1: Create Your Bot (5 Minutes)

Open Telegram, search for @BotFather, and send /newbot. Pick a display name (anything) and a username ending in bot. You’ll get an API token:

123456789:ABCdefGHIjklMNOpqrSTUvwxYZ

Keep that token secret. Anyone with it controls your bot. If it leaks, message BotFather and send /revoke immediately.

Step 2: Make It Feel Professional (Optional but Worth It)

Tell BotFather to run these commands:

/setdescription  - "What can this bot do?" text
/setabouttext    - Short profile description
/setuserpic      - Upload an avatar
/setcommands     - Define the / menu
/setprivacy      - Control group message visibility

For /setcommands, try this starter set:

help - Show help information
new - Start a new conversation
sethome - Set this chat as the home channel

Step 3: Show Online/Offline Status (Nice Touch)

Bots don’t get the green “online” dot that users have. But Hermes can fake it by changing the bot’s short description—the line under its name on the profile page.

Enable it in your Hermes config:

gateway:
  platforms:
    telegram:
      extra:
        status_indicator: true
        status_online: "🟢 Online"
        status_offline: "🔴 Offline"

Caveat: This is global—everyone sees the same status, not per-chat. And it only shows “Offline” on a clean shutdown. A hard crash leaves the last status stuck. That’s the limit of profile-text indicators.

Step 4: Command Menu Priority (The Fine Print)

Hermes registers its command menu automatically. If you’ve set custom commands via BotFather, know that Telegram caps the visible menu—only the first few commands show in the / button. Keep your list short and put the most-used commands first.

Final Thoughts

The magic here is zero friction. Your team doesn’t learn a new tool—they just start talking to a bot. Voice memos become text, questions get answers, reports arrive on schedule.

Practical tip: Before rolling it out team-wide, test the bot in a private group with one or two colleagues. Set up a daily standup summary as your first scheduled task. Once people see the bot deliver value automatically, adoption takes care of itself.