Two Ways In
Open Configurations → Channels in the dashboard sidebar, and on the Instagram card choose Authorize. The dialog offers:
- Connect your Instagram account, with a Connect Instagram button, you sign in with Instagram itself, and no Facebook Page is involved.
- Advanced, bring your own Meta app below it, the manual route, where messages come through the Facebook Page your Instagram account is linked to.
The Connect Instagram button currently reads Coming soon: ProxyAI's own Facebook application is still going through Meta's business verification and review. Until then, use the Advanced route.
Either way, the account must be an Instagram Professional account, Business or Creator. Personal accounts cannot receive messages from any tool, so convert yours in the Instagram app first.
After Connecting: Allow Access to Messages
This is the step that catches nearly everyone, on both routes. Instagram keeps outside access to your messages switched off by default, and while it is off nothing reaches the bot, no error, just silence.
In the Instagram app: Settings → Messages and story replies → Connected tools, and turn message access on.
If the account is connected and DMs still go unanswered, check this before anything else.
The Manual Route
This one is genuinely technical, it goes through Facebook's developer site rather than ordinary Instagram settings. Hand it to whoever looks after your website if that is not your area, or wait for the one-click connect.
On this route Instagram messages travel through Facebook, so the access you generate is for the Facebook Page, not for Instagram directly.
You will need:
- An Instagram Professional account linked to a Facebook Page you are an admin of (Instagram app → Settings → Account type and tools → Linked accounts).
- An app on the Meta Developer site with the Instagram product added.
Two values go into ProxyAI:
- Page Access Token, for the linked Page, with the Instagram messaging permissions granted.
- App Secret, App Settings → Basic → App Secret. ProxyAI uses it to confirm incoming messages really came from Instagram.
Paste both and choose Save. ProxyAI checks them, finds the Instagram account behind the Page, and connects it. If the Page has no professional Instagram account linked, the save fails on the spot rather than leaving you with a setup that could never deliver a message. When it works, the dialog shows the connected handle.
Then point Instagram at ProxyAI once, using the Webhook callback URL and Verify token shown in the dialog:
- Meta Developer site → your app → Instagram → Webhooks (or Messenger → Settings → Webhooks, depending how the app was set up).
- Add Callback URL, paste both values, then Verify and Save, save in ProxyAI first, because Meta checks the address immediately.
- Subscribe to `messages`.
Finally, complete Meta's App Review for Instagram messaging and switch the app to Live. Until then only accounts listed on the app get a reply.
Test It
Send a direct message to the account from a different Instagram account. The bot replies in a few seconds.
- Nothing happens, check Connected tools in the Instagram app, as above.
- Saving fails, account not linked, the account is still personal, or not linked to the Page.
- Only you get replies, the app is still in Development mode.
- Story replies and mentions are ignored, only direct messages reach the bot.
The 24-Hour Rule
Like Messenger, Instagram only allows a reply within 24 hours of the customer's last message. Bot answers go out immediately, so they are almost never affected. A human replying from the inbox a day later is: Instagram refuses it, and you have to wait for the customer to write again.