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Ice breakers are the suggested questions a first-time contact sees before they type anything. Tapping one either sends back an answer you wrote or starts one of your flows. They are the easiest way to get someone from “opened the chat” to a real conversation, because the contact never has to guess what to say. You set them up in Configurations → Bot Setup, on the channel selected in the channel selector at the top. See Bot setup.

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What each channel supports

Ice breakers are not the same feature on every channel. The biggest difference: on WhatsApp an ice breaker cannot start a flow — it is only a question, with no action attached.
Live Chat has no ice breakers at all. The equivalent is Quick replies under Behavior in the widget customizer — see Live Chat widget.

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Facebook, Instagram and Telegram

These three share the same editor: each ice breaker is a Question plus an action, and the action is either Text reply (write the answer to send) or Start flow (pick the flow to run).
1

Select the channel

Open Configurations → Bot Setup and select the Facebook page, Instagram account or Telegram bot in the channel selector.
2

Open Ice breakers

Select the Ice breakers section.
3

Add a question

Select Add ice breaker and replace the question with one a real customer would ask — What are your opening hours?, I want to book, Do you deliver?. Keep it under 80 characters — anything longer is cut off when it is sent to Facebook or Instagram. On Telegram the button label is cut at 64, so keep Telegram questions shorter still.
4

Choose what it does

Pick Text reply and write the answer, or pick Start flow and choose a flow.
5

Save

Select Save changes. On Facebook and Instagram this pushes the ice breakers straight to your connected page or account.
Telegram takes four, not eight. The Telegram page lets you add up to eight ice breakers, but saving more than four is rejected — you get an error toast and nothing is saved until you remove the extras. Stop at four.

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Two things that surprise people

Telegram ice breakers ride on the welcome message. They are shown as tappable buttons underneath the message someone gets when they tap Start (/start). If the Welcome section is switched off, or its text is empty, no ice breakers appear — there is nothing to attach them to. Unlike Facebook and Instagram, they are never sent to Telegram itself; DMLY adds them as the welcome goes out. Instagram shows them on mobile only. They are correct and saved, they just don’t render in Instagram on desktop.
On Facebook, ice breakers need a Get Started button to appear at all. DMLY sets one for you whenever you have a welcome, an ice breaker or a menu configured, so there is nothing to do.

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WhatsApp

WhatsApp keeps ice breakers on its own screen: Bot Setup → Conversational Components, where they sit alongside Show a welcome message to new conversations and Commands. Add up to four with Add ice breaker, each up to 80 characters, then save.
A WhatsApp ice breaker is only a question. There is no Text reply or Start flow action to attach, because WhatsApp doesn’t carry one. When a customer taps it, the question text arrives as an ordinary message from them — nothing answers it by itself.
So on WhatsApp, treat an ice breaker as a way of putting words in the customer’s mouth, then catch those words with a keyword. Write the ice breaker and the keyword to match:
  1. Add the ice breaker I want to book an appointment.
  2. Build a flow on that WhatsApp channel with a keyword trigger for book.
  3. Publish it. See Triggers and Publishing bots.
Keep WhatsApp ice breakers short and distinctive, and give each one a keyword no other flow uses. Two active flows matching the same keyword both reply — DMLY blocks publishing when it spots that. See Common mistakes.

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How Start flow works

On Facebook, Instagram and Telegram, the Start flow picker lists the flows that are active flow-builder automations on the selected channel. Quick-form automations and flows built for a different channel don’t appear. A tap starts that flow directly, from its first step. The flow’s own trigger and keywords are irrelevant to the tap — you don’t need to give a flow a keyword just so an ice breaker can reach it. The flow does still have to be published: an active flow with no published version is listed in the picker, but tapping it does nothing.
On Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, ice breakers only show to someone who hasn’t messaged you before, so they are the front door, not a menu. On Telegram they come back every time someone sends /start. If you want a prompt that’s available for the whole conversation, use the persistent menu instead — its items can start flows too.
Work through it by channel:
  • Telegram — check the Welcome section is enabled and has text. No welcome, no ice breakers. They only show on /start.
  • Instagram — check on a phone. They don’t render on desktop.
  • Facebook / Instagram — saving pushes them to Meta, and a failed push is reported the moment you save, with a message pointing at the logs. Open Logs and look for the sync entry.
  • Any channel — an ice breaker with a blank question is skipped. Fill it in or remove it.
  • Facebook / Instagram / WhatsApp — you have already messaged this contact. Ice breakers are for first-time conversations; test with a number or account that has never written to you. (Telegram is different — just send /start again.)
For a Text reply, check the answer field isn’t empty — a blank answer sends nothing.For a Start flow, check the flow is published, not just active. Then check the usual silent non-starts: the bot is paused on that contact (unpause it from the Inbox), or the flow is set to respond only once per contact and has already run for them. See Automation not triggering.On WhatsApp, nothing happening is expected unless a keyword matches — the ice breaker has no action of its own. See the WhatsApp section above.