Hi Everyone,
I am posting here because I am stuck and need practical help from someone who has successfully deployed a Zia Agent with WhatsApp.
Zia Agents looks like a very promising product. I have watched the platform expand quickly, and I have noticed the number of prebuilt agents increasing significantly over the last few weeks. That is encouraging.
However, my experience trying to deploy my first real agent has been extremely frustrating.
My use case is straightforward:
I want to use a Zia Agent to help manage B2C WhatsApp lead follow-up for BusinessEnglish2Go. New leads come into Zoho CRM, WhatsApp messages are sent through Zoho CRM Business Messaging, and when a lead replies, I want the agent to help classify the reply, update the CRM Lead, add notes/tasks, and eventually support follow-up.
The problem is that I cannot get past the basic setup.
There are two unresolved issues:
Agent deployment issue
The agent appeared to deploy at one point, but after refreshing, it showed as not deployed. Later, after following support’s instruction to delete the Digital Employee from Zoho One and redeploy from Zia Agents, I received:
“Agent Deployment Failed. Something went wrong. Please try again later.”
WhatsApp channel issue
I also cannot connect our existing Zoho CRM Business Messaging WhatsApp number to Zia Agents. I continue to receive errors such as:
“phone number cannot be connected: CONFIGURED_IN_CHANNEL”
and
“Selected WABA ID is not allowed to connect with the selected Phone Number.”
The original WhatsApp ticket was opened on June 5. Today is June 29. I have sent screenshots, screen recordings, detailed explanations, and repeated requests for a live screen-share session. I also upgraded to Premium Support because this is important to our lead follow-up process.
The most frustrating part is that support keeps confirming what should be possible, but I still do not have clear step-by-step help to actually get it working. I have repeatedly asked for a live session, but I keep receiving written replies saying the team is investigating or asking me to try another step.
At this point, I am not trying to build a complex automation. I only need help proving the basic setup:
Deploy the Zia Agent successfully.
Connect the WhatsApp channel.
Send one test inbound WhatsApp message.
Confirm that the Zia Agent receives it.
Confirm that the execution appears in Observability.
Has anyone here successfully connected Zia Agents with WhatsApp when the same number is already active in Zoho CRM Business Messaging?
If so, what exact steps did you follow?
Also, if anyone from the Zia Agents team monitors this community, I would really appreciate help getting a live troubleshooting session scheduled. I want to use this product, but I need help getting through the initial deployment and WhatsApp connection.