Connecting Telegram Channels to Postpone

Postpone publishes to Telegram through a bot that you create and add to your channel or group. Channels are the best fit: posts in a channel appear as regular channel posts. Posts in a group are sent by the bot, so they appear under the bot's name and photo, not yours. Follow the steps below to connect a Telegram channel or group to Postpone.

Create a bot with @BotFather

Open Telegram and start a chat with @BotFather.
Send the /newbot command and follow the prompts to give your bot a name and a username.
Copy the bot token that @BotFather sends you. It looks like 123456789:AAHdqTcvCH1vGWJxfSeofSAs0K5PALDsaw.

Use a bot dedicated to Postpone. Telegram only delivers a bot's updates to a single app, so a bot that is also used elsewhere can't be used for Postpone's analytics.

Add the bot to your channel or group

Channels: open your channel's settings, go to Administrators, click Add Administrator, search for your bot, and turn on Manage Messages. That permission lets Postpone post to the channel and pin posts after publishing.

Groups: add the bot as a member of the group. Making it an administrator lets Postpone track reactions on your posts. Remember that posts in a group appear under the bot's name and photo, so give the bot the name and photo you'd like members to see. If Telegram later upgrades the group to a supergroup, Postpone switches to the upgraded group automatically.

Connect the channel or group in Postpone

Navigate to Settings > Social Accounts > Telegram in Postpone.
Click Connect a Telegram Channel.
Paste the bot token you copied in Step 1 and click Find my channels.
Tick the channels and groups you want to connect. Postpone lists the chats the bot was added to recently, channels first. If yours is missing, post a message in it (or send /start in a group) and click Refresh. A channel's discussion group is listed too, unticked: you don't need to connect it to count comments, so only connect it if you want to schedule posts in the chat itself.
Click Connect Channel.

Postpone checks that the bot can post to each chat, and your channels and groups will be connected!

Postpone lists the chats the bot has been seen in: the ones it was added to recently, and any it was in while connected to Postpone. If a chat is missing, post any message in it (or send /start in a group) and click Refresh. This works for private channels too, so you rarely need their chat ID.

Finding the chat ID of a private channel

Public channels and groups can be entered by @username (or a t.me link) with the enter it manually link under the list. Private ones have no username, so Postpone needs their numeric chat ID, such as -1001234567890. Before looking it up, try the step above: with the bot added as an administrator, post a message in the channel and click Refresh, and the channel appears in the list.

If you still need the ID:

Open Telegram Web and select the channel. The address bar ends with a number such as #-1001234567890. That number, including the minus sign, is the chat ID. If it doesn't start with -100, add -100 in front of it.
Alternatively, forward any message from the channel to a bot such as @userinfobot, which replies with the channel's ID.

Connecting several channels

You can connect as many channels and groups as you like with the same bot. Add the bot to each channel or group, then repeat the steps above with the same token.

Analytics

Postpone tracks the reactions and replies your posts receive, along with your channel's subscriber count:

Reactions are only reported by Telegram when the bot is an administrator of the channel or group.
Replies are the comments left in the channel's linked discussion group. To count them, add the bot to the discussion group as an administrator as well. Postpone checks this when you connect the channel and a few times a day afterwards, so comments posted before the bot became an administrator are not counted.

Telegram's Bot API does not report view or forward counts, so Postpone can't show those.