When users communicate with businesses through Direct Messages, they may be guided by Welcome Messages or led to a private conversation via a Direct Message deeplink. In these cases, it can be important for developers to know if another object preceded the DM in conversation. For example, Initiated Via helps a customer service agent see the full conversation history or enable a bot developer to perform A/B testing of different welcome messages.
The initiated_via object in the Direct Message event object indicates the ID of the Twitter entity that directly preceded the DM in the sender’s context. Currently tweet_id and welcome_message_id may be included. The initiated_via object is only present if a Twitter entity directly preceded the DM.
initiated_via object
| initiated_via.tweet_id |
The ID of the Tweet with Direct Message Prompt the event was initiated from if one was used. |
|---|---|
| initiated_via.welcome_message_id |
The ID of the Welcome Message immediately preceding the event if one was used. |
Note: Direct Messages are never referenced as an entity type under the “initiated_via” object. Developers should continue to rely on IDs for ordering Direct Message events.
Example Direct Message Event
The following Direct Message event was preceded by a Direct Message prompt from a Tweet or a Welcome Message was presented to the user.
{
"type": "message_create",
"id": "1234858592",
"created_timestamp": "1392078023603",
"initiated_via": {
"tweet_id": "123456",
"welcome_message_id": "456789"
},
"message_create": {
"target": {
"recipient_id": "1234858592"
},
"sender_id": "3805104374",
"source_app_id": "268278",
"message_data": {
"text": "Blue Bird",
"entities": {
"hashtags": [],
"symbols": [],
"urls": [],
"user_mentions": [],
},
"quick_reply_response": {
"type": "options",
"metadata": "external_id_2"
},
"attachment": {
"type": "media",
"media": {
...
}
}
}
}
}