Creating and managing chats

Group chats and channels

New Matrix rooms for existing Telegram chats

New portal rooms for existing Telegram chats should be created when:

  1. The bridge is (re)started
  2. The user logs in to Telegram
  3. A message or an invite is received in the Telegram chat

If a portal room is somehow broken, you can tell the bridge to forget it using the command delete-portal. The portal room will be recreated when one of the conditions above is fulfilled. Note that automatic portal creation at startup/login is only for group chats. Private chat portals are only created when you receive a message or start a chat.

New Telegram chats for existing Matrix rooms

You can use the create command to create a new Telegram chat for an existing Matrix room.

Before running the command, make sure you have invited your appservice bot to the room, given the bot PL 100 and removed PL 100 from everyone else. As of 0.2.0, the bridge will function even without power levels.

Existing Telegram chats to existing Matrix rooms

New in version 0.2.0

Get the ID of the Telegram chat with the /id command of the relay bot. If you don't have/want a relay bot, figure out another way to get the telegram chat ID, and make sure it's prefixed (-100 for channels and - for chats). Then, run bridge <chat ID> in the room you want to bridge. Again, make sure that the appservice bot is in the room and the power levels are correct like in the previous section.

Matrix ⟷ Telegram mappings

Most Matrix actions are mapped to their Telegram counterparts. Joining, leaving, inviting and kicking are mapped as-is.

Basic power level bridging is implemented. However, there may be some issues that require restarting the bridge to properly sync the power levels. Also, the power level requirements are currently hardcoded as follows:

  • Normal groups
    • PL 0 = normal user
    • PL 50 = admin
    • PL 95 = creator
  • Supergroups and channels
    • PL 0 = normal user
    • PL 50 = moderator (i.e. admin who can't add other admins)
    • PL 75 = admin
    • PL 95 = creator

Private messages

Creating portals

There are three ways to create private chat portals:

  1. Start a normal Matrix DM (create a room and invite the Matrix ghost of the Telegram user), e.g. by finding a user in the user list of an already bridged group chat. The ghost should join and send confirmation of the portal creation.
  2. Use the pm command.
  3. Send or receive a message on another Telegram client.

Matrix ⟷ Telegram mappings

Most non-messaging Matrix actions are ignored in private chat portals. However, Leaving the portal will cause the portal room to be cleaned up and forgotten.

Bot commands

Initiating chats with bots is no different from initiating chats with real Telegram users.

New in version 0.2.0: The bridge will translate Matrix->Telegram bot commands at the start of the message from !command to /command.

Please note that when messaging a bot for the first time, it may expect you to run /start first. The bridge does not do this automatically.