# First Message Processing

The WhatsApp channel is activated by a first user message. Typically is the target user that will start the conversation either by directly typing something or by following a typical [WhatsApp chat url.](https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/android/26000030/)

Using Xenioo you have the choice to decide how to handle this first message.

### Not processing the first message

This is the default setting. Xenioo will receive the very first user message but will not redirect it to the chatbot. The conversation will start from the very [first start interaction](/basic-concepts/the-chatbot-designer/interactions_concepts.md) normally.\
The text sent by the user can still be accessed anytime by your chatbot from the *optin\_message* [runtime variable](/actions-and-operations/variables-and-tags.md).

In this case **do not use** an input action as the very first step of your chatbot as the chatbot will stay silent until the user writes again.

### Processing the first message

If you decide to receive the first message like normal text, your chatbot can react to the message received like [with a standard global detection action](/actions-and-operations/input/xenioo.bots.actions.base.textdetectionaction.md). The global detection can trigger a flow change caused by different options in the control expression.

If you use [automatic redirection NLP](/ai/intents.md#activation) intents or [bot or behavior level triggers](/actions-and-operations/input/global-detection.md), the first message may trigger automatically any of them.

Assuming you're giving away links to your WhatsApp with different starting links, your start interaction may look like this:

![](/files/-MK1NxbVXjPB0Lknt1-I)

The very first [Global Detection Action](/actions-and-operations/input/xenioo.bots.actions.base.textdetectionaction.md) will receive the text and trigger a flow change based on the incoming value (menu or product in our example). The last Go To is instead used to handle different inputs that can show an help for your user.


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