Connect an Instagram professional account so your AI agent answers DMs, within Meta's messaging windows.
The Instagram channel connects your Instagram account's direct messages to Asks. Customers DM your account; the AI agent answers, and conversations land in the inbox. The integration covers DMs only — comments and mentions are not part of it.
Availability — this channel is rolling out and may not be enabled for your workspace yet. It will appear under Channels in your dashboard as soon as it's available.
Prerequisites
- An Instagram professional account — Business or Creator. Personal accounts can't connect; switch the account type in the Instagram app first.
Connect Instagram
Go to app.asks.app/channels/instagram and start the connection. You're redirected to Instagram's official Business Login.
Asks asks for basic profile access and messaging permissions — enough to handle DMs, nothing more.
Asks subscribes webhooks and starts routing DMs to your inbox immediately. Access tokens refresh automatically, so there's nothing to maintain.
Verify it works — DM your Instagram account from another account. The message should appear as a conversation in your inbox, with the AI agent's reply showing up in the Instagram thread.
How messaging works
Instagram enforces Meta's messaging windows, and Asks applies them for you:
- Within 24 hours of the customer's last message — the AI agent and your team can reply freely.
- From 24 hours to 7 days — only a human agent may reply (Meta's human-agent window). The AI agent never uses this window; conversations needing a response after 24 hours are your team's to answer from the inbox.
- After 7 days — the conversation can't be replied to at all until the customer writes again.
Story mentions arrive as conversations (marked as a story mention), and replies to your stories arrive as regular DMs. Media in DMs is supported — images, video, audio, and reels all land in the inbox.
The thread stays in sync with Instagram: emoji reactions, message edits, and read receipts carry over, and if a customer unsends a message it's redacted in Asks too. Replies your team sends from the Instagram app or Meta Business Suite are mirrored into the same Asks conversation, so the record stays complete wherever you answer. When the AI agent offers quick-reply choices, they appear as native chips in the DM.
You can connect more than one Instagram account; each becomes its own channel.
Disconnecting
Disconnect on the channel page unsubscribes Asks and revokes its access; conversations stay in your inbox. If you instead remove Asks from your Instagram account settings (deauthorize), the channel is disconnected automatically and your workspace is notified. A data-deletion request from Instagram permanently deletes the channel and its conversations.
Troubleshooting
"Personal accounts can't connect"
Your Instagram account is a personal account. Switch it to Business or Creator in the Instagram app (Settings → Account type), then connect again.
The AI stopped replying in a conversation
If the customer's last message is more than 24 hours old, that's Meta's policy at work — only a human agent may reply until day 7. Answer from the inbox.
I can't reply at all
After 7 days with no customer message, Meta closes the conversation. It reopens as soon as the customer writes again.
Comments on my posts don't show up
Expected. The integration handles DMs only.