How to Connect Instagram as Data Destination

The integration will allow you to respond to comments on posts and send messages to Instagram based on data from other systems. For example, if there is a new row in Google Sheets, an order in your CRM has moved to another stage of the funnel, or a new order appears on your site, a response to comments will be automatically posted to the specified comment ID. This will allow you to automate the process of sending a reply to a comment and sending messages to Direct as efficiently as possible and save a lot of time.

Let's go through the entire Instagram setup steps together!

Navigation:
1. What will the integration with Instagram do?
2. How to connect your Instagram account to ApiX-Drive?
3. How to set up data transfer to Instagram in the selected action?
4. Example of data that will be sent to your Instagram.
5. Auto-update and update interval.

Answers to frequently asked questions:
1. The required Instagram page or account is not listed.

Once you have set up a Data Source system, such as Google Sheets, you can begin setting up Instagram as a Data Destination.

To do this, click “Start configuring Data Destination”.

Select the system as Data Destination. In this case, you must specify Instagram.

Next, you need to specify an action, for example, “Reply to COMMENT.”

- Reply to COMMENT - the ApiX-Drive system based on data from the Data Source block will send a response to a comment on a post in your Instagram account.
- Send MESSAGE - the ApiX-Drive system based on data from the Data Source block will send a message to the specified recipient in your Instagram account.

The next step is to select the Instagram account into which the data will be sent.

If there are no accounts connected to the system, click “Connect account”.

Enter your authorization information and give your permission to ApiX-Drive to work with this account.

Check the boxes for access to the required pages and accounts.

We recommend that you grant access to all existing pages and accounts at once, so that in the future you will be able to work with them and get comments and messages.

Select the business accounts you need on which you have connected Instagram accounts.

Select the pages you need.

Select the Instagram accounts you need.

In the next step you see what accesses have been granted, click Save to save.

Click Got it to complete the connection.

When the connected account appears in the "active accounts" list, select it.

Now you need to select the page and Instagram account where the reply to the comment on the post will be sent.

Next, you need to specify the field where the “Comment ID” will be taken from.

In the "Message" field, you can use both system variables such as time, date, year, month, day, and variables from the data source system. In this case, Google Sheets. When you select variables, you'll be able to see what data is in the Google Sheets fields.

You can combine these variables in any way you like. For example, manually write a template response text and add universal text to each comment from the Google Sheets column.

Note!
If the required page is not in the drop-down list or after connecting your account you have access to new pages, you will need to connect your Instagram account again.

To do this, follow these steps:

1. Check the availability of admin access to the required advertising pages.
2. Go to your Facebook account under Settings and Privacy - Settings, then go to Business Integrations.

3. Remove the ApiX-Drive application.

4. Switch to Incognito mode in your browser.
5. In your connection with Instagram, go to the Access stage in the Data Source and click “Connect account”.
6. Enter your authorization information and select the business accounts you need. Now you can select the necessary pages that you have access to, in the next step select the Instagram accounts you need.
7. Click Save and Got it to complete the connection.  

Now you can specify where the "Comment ID" will come from.
Comment ID is the unique ID of each comment published under your post. In order to reply to comments via ApiX-Drive, you must first obtain the comment ID.
You can get it by setting up Instagram as a Data Source using this link and passing it, for example, to Google Sheets, and then get new rows from Google Sheets and using the comment ID to send replies to comments.

Now you can see what a future response to a comment will look like, according to the selected data.

Click “Send test data to Instagram” and a reply to the comment will be sent to the comment ID specified in the test data.

If you are not satisfied with something, click “Edit” and go back a step.

If you are satisfied with everything, click “Continue” to continue the setup.

This completes the Data Destination setup!

Now you can start choosing the update interval and enabling auto-update.

To do this, click "Enable update".

On the main screen, click on the gear icon to select the required update interval or setup scheduled launch. To start the connection by time, select scheduled start and specify the desired time for the connection update will be started, or add several options at once when you need the connection will be started.

Attention! In order for the scheduled launch to work at the specified time, the interval between the current time and the specified time must be more than 5 minutes. For example, you select the time 12:10 and the current time is 12:08 - in this case, the automatic update of the connection will occur at 12:10 the next day. If you select the time 12:20 and the current time is 12:13 - the auto-update of the connection will work today and then every day at 12:20.

To make the current connection transmit data only after another connection, check the box "Update connection only after start other connection" and specify the connection after which the current connection will be started.      

To enable auto-update, switch the slider to the position as shown in the picture.

In order to perform a one-time connection trigger, click on the arrow icon.

This completes setup Instagram as a Data Destination! See how simple it is!?

Now you don’t have to worry, ApiX-Drive will do everything on its own!