Learn How To Connect LINE Official Account with Social Champ

Hey, Champs! Social Champ now enables you to connect your LINE Official Account to Engage, so your team can read and reply to customer chats from one shared inbox. Follow this step-by-step guide to set up your LINE Official Account and connect it with Social Champ.

Please Note:

• LINE is currently in Beta, so you may not see it on every account yet.
• Social Champ supports one-to-one chats only. Group chats, broadcasts, rich menus and publishing to LINE are not supported.
• Replies sent from Social Champ may use your LINE Official Account’s monthly message allowance.

What you need

1. A LINE account: the LINE app installed on your phone and signed in. You will use it to create the Official Account and send test messages.
2. Access to LINE Official Account Manager (manager.line.biz) and the LINE Developers Console (developers.line.biz/console), signed in with the same LINE account.
3. A Social Champ account with permission to manage social accounts in the workspace. The account owner always has it.
4. The free LINE plan is fine for testing.

Part A: Set up your account on LINE

Create a LINE Official Account

1. Go to LINE’s business sign-up page (account.line.biz) and sign in with your LINE account.
2. Fill in the form to create a new LINE Official Account: account name, company or store name, industry, and country or region.
3. Choose the country or region carefully. It is set when the account is created and affects the plans and features LINE offers.
4. Open LINE Official Account Manager (manager.line.biz) and check that your new account is listed.

Turn on the Messaging API

1. In LINE Official Account Manager, open your account and go to Settings > Messaging API.
2. Click Enable Messaging API. If this is your first time, LINE asks you to register as a developer (name and email).
3. Choose an existing provider or create a new one. A provider is the company or team that owns the channel.
4. This creates a Messaging API channel for your account in the LINE Developers Console.

Please Note: Once a provider is assigned to a channel, LINE does not allow it to be changed. Use a clearly named provider.

Copy your channel details

Social Champ needs three values from the LINE Developers Console.

1. Open the LINE Developers Console, select your provider, then select the Messaging API channel you just created.
2. On the Basic settings tab, copy the Channel ID (numbers only) and the Channel secret (32 letters and numbers).
   [Screenshot: Basic settings tab with Channel ID and Channel secret]
3. On the Messaging API tab, scroll to the bottom and find the Channel access token (long-lived). If none is shown, click Issue, then copy it.
4. Keep these three values somewhere private. Anyone with the secret and token can act as your account.

Set how your account responds

In LINE Official Account Manager, open your account’s response settings (under Settings) and set the following:

1. Chat: Off. When Chat is on, LINE’s own chat screen competes for the same conversations, and messages may not reach Social Champ.
2. Auto-response messages and Greeting messages: Off. Otherwise your customer gets two replies: LINE’s automatic one and your team’s.
3. Webhook: On. This lets LINE send messages to Social Champ.

Please Note: You do not need to paste a webhook URL anywhere. Social Champ sets it on LINE for you when you connect.

Add your account as a friend

This gives you a chat to send test messages from.

1. In the LINE Developers Console (Messaging API tab) or on your account’s home in LINE Official Account Manager, find the QR code and basic ID (it starts with @).
2. In the LINE app on your phone, scan the QR code or search for the basic ID, then add the account as a friend.

Part B: Connect LINE with Social Champ

Open the LINE option

1. After you log in to your Social Champ account, pick the workspace the LINE account should belong to.
2. Click the plus icon on the left panel and choose Add Social Account.
3. Under Data & Messaging, find LINE (Official Account) and click + Add.
   The Connect your LINE account window opens.

Enter your channel details

1. Enter the Channel ID, Channel secret and Channel access token (long-lived) you copied earlier.
   [Screenshot: Connect your LINE account window]
2. The Add channel button turns on once all three look right. The Channel ID must be 6 to 20 digits and the Channel secret must be 32 letters and numbers.
3. Click Add channel. Social Champ asks LINE to confirm who the account is. Nothing is saved yet.
4. If LINE rejects a value, the reason appears in red under the fields. Fix the value and try again.

Confirm the account

1. The window shows This LINE account will be connected in Social Champ with the account’s picture, name and @ID.
2. Check that it is the right account. If not, click Cancel and start again with the correct channel’s values.
3. Read the note in the window. It tells you that the account will be reconnected if it was connected before, warns you if Chat is still on in LINE Official Account Manager, and reminds you that messages sent from the LINE app or LINE Official Account Manager won’t appear in Social Champ.
4. Click Connect account.

If your account already sends messages to another tool

A LINE account can send its messages to only one place. If yours is already linked to another tool, the window title changes to Replace the current webhook? and shows the other tool’s address.

1. Click Replace and connect to move your LINE messages to Social Champ. The other tool stops receiving LINE messages.
2. Or click Back to leave things as they are.

Verification

1. Social Champ shows Verifying while LINE sends a test message to confirm your Channel secret is correct.
2. When it succeeds, you see Social account connected. Click Done. The page reloads.
3. If it fails, the reason is shown in red. Click Try again, fix the value, and run it again.

Tadaa! You have successfully added your LINE Official Account to Social Champ.

Where to find your LINE account

• Manage Accounts (Settings > Workspace > Social Accounts): your account is listed as Connected, with Last message received once a customer writes. If you see Action required, setup did not finish or LINE stopped accepting the token. Reconnect with a fresh token. Your conversations are kept.
• Engage inbox: new one-to-one LINE chats appear from now on. Chats from before you connected are not imported.

Test your connection

Use the phone you added as a friend as your “customer”, and Social Champ as the agent.

1. Text: Send a text from your phone. It appears in the Engage inbox as a new LINE conversation.
2. Image: Send a photo. It appears in the conversation.
3. Reply: Reply from Engage. The message shows Sending, then Accepted by LINE, and arrives on your phone. Accepted by LINE means LINE took the message, not that the customer has read it.
4. Image reply: Reply with a JPEG or PNG of 1 MB or less. It arrives on your phone.

Good to know

• Images: Replies accept JPEG or PNG files of 1 MB or less.
• Unsupported content: Voice messages, videos, files, locations and stickers arrive as a short note. View them in the LINE app.
• Unsent messages: If a customer unsends a message, it is replaced by Message unsent in Engage.
• Blocked accounts: If a customer blocks your account, you can still read the conversation but can’t reply. Replies work again once they unblock you and send a message.
• One webhook per channel: Connecting your channel to Social Champ moves it away from wherever it pointed before.
• Message allowance: On the free LINE plan, the monthly allowance can run out. Social Champ then tells you the limit is reached and keeps your draft.
• Reconnecting: Reconnecting the same channel (for example, with a new token) keeps its conversations. A different channel is treated as a different account.
• Outside messages: Messages sent from the LINE app or LINE Official Account Manager do not appear in Social Champ.
• Analytics: In Analytics, open Engage Team Analytics or Engage Labels and choose LINE under the Platform filter.

Troubleshooting

Get the Support you need

Having trouble? Got a question? We’re here to support you every step of the way. Simply email us at [email protected], and we’ll get back to you.

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