catalog management in regular business account

[may215]

Hi,
Is it possible to manage the catalog of accounts if it's just a regular business account?
Can I send mass messages to clients, like 1000 clients each time?
Is it possible to get analytics about the messages, if its receviced, opened/viewed?
thanks.

[rmyndharis]

Hi @may215 — three questions, three answers. Let me take them in turn.

1. Catalog management on a regular business account

Yes, OpenWA exposes catalog operations — assuming the linked WhatsApp number has a catalog configured (which works on both WhatsApp Business and regular accounts that have enabled the catalog feature). The endpoints are:

• GET /api/sessions/{sessionId}/catalog — fetch the session's catalog
• GET /api/sessions/{sessionId}/catalog/products — list products
• GET /api/sessions/{sessionId}/catalog/products/{productId} — get a specific product
• POST /api/sessions/{sessionId}/messages/send-product — send a product card to a chat
• POST /api/sessions/{sessionId}/messages/send-catalog — send the whole catalog to a chat

Note: these endpoints read and send; creating/editing products through the API isn't currently supported — that has to be done in the WhatsApp Business app on the phone. If programmatic product management is important to you, that's a reasonable feature request — please open a separate discussion with your use case so we can gauge interest.

2. Mass / bulk messaging to 1000 clients

Yes, OpenWA has a bulk-send endpoint designed for exactly this. See POST /api/sessions/{sessionId}/messages/send-bulk (accepts an array of recipients and an inter-message delay). The dashboard Message Tester also has a bulk-text-batch UI (recipients one per line, optional delay, live progress, cancel).

A few practical caveats — and these matter a lot:

• Bulk-sending to numbers that have never messaged you is the single most reliable way to get the sender account restricted. Please read the Risk & Safe-Sending section of the README before blasting 1000 cold contacts — the cold-contact first-send silent drop is tracked in #830.
• Rate-limit yourself: the bulk endpoint accepts an inter-message delay. A few messages per minute per session is sustainable; 1000 in a few minutes from a fresh number is not.
• Warm up the number, use opted-in recipients, and keep the volume gradual.

3. Analytics (received / opened / viewed)

Partial. OpenWA tracks the standard WhatsApp delivery state machine:

• sent — message left your session
• delivered — arrived on the recipient's device
• read — recipient opened the chat (WhatsApp exposes read receipts; this maps to your "opened/viewed")
• failed — never delivered

These states are:

1. Available per-message via GET /api/sessions/{sessionId}/messages (each row carries a status field).
2. Pushed in real-time via webhook events (message.sent, message.delivered, message.read, message.failed).
3. Aggregated in the dashboard Message Analytics view (default 24h window).

What's not currently available:

• "Viewed" in the sense of "how long they looked at it" — WhatsApp doesn't expose that.
• Per-campaign or per-template rollup reporting — you'd build that on your side from the webhook events.

If the built-in analytics don't cover your use case, the recommended pattern is to subscribe to the webhook events above and aggregate in your own data store. Hope that helps!

[may215]

I followed the instructions, and I got banned after 20 messages :(