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APIs involved: Customer Chat API, Customer Accounts API, Agent Chat API, Configuration API Suppose your customers contact you through SMS, WhatsApp, or a proprietary mobile app and you want those conversations to land in Text alongside your web chats. Your server acts as the bridge — it receives messages from the external channel, opens chats in Text on the customer’s behalf, and relays agent replies back. Your agent token needs the customers:own scope to issue customer tokens.
1

Authenticate the customer

Use the agent token grant on the Customer Accounts API: your server calls POST /customer/token with grant_type: agent_token, authorized with an agent access token. The response contains a customer_access_token. Use that token to authorize all subsequent Customer Chat API calls on behalf of that customer. Pass entity_id if the customer already exists in Text, or omit it to create a new customer identity.
2

Open a conversation

Call start-chat on the Customer Chat API and send the customer’s first message as an event. From that point, the conversation is visible to your agents.
3

Relay agent replies back to the channel

Subscribe to incoming_event. When an agent replies, your server receives the event and delivers it to the original channel.
4

Configure routing

Each external channel typically maps to a Text group. Set up routing rules via the Configuration API so SMS chats, WhatsApp chats, and web chats land in the right queues with the right agents.