A shopper DMs your Instagram asking what you’ve got in a certain size or color, and the product carousel that shows up for the same question on LINE or Messenger never appears — because 1CS can’t send a scrolling product card on Instagram yet. That’s not Instagram blocking it: Meta’s own messaging documentation confirms Instagram DM supports the same carousel format Messenger does. The gap is on 1CS’s side, and it has a specific, fixable workaround.
What Instagram’s own API actually allows
Meta’s Messenger Platform documentation for Instagram states that the Generic Template — the scrolling carousel of image cards also used on Messenger — is supported on Instagram DM, with a carousel holding up to 10 elements (cards) per message, each with a title and subtitle capped at 80 characters (Meta for Developers: Instagram Generic Template). The same page caps buttons at 3 per card, and restricts them to two types only — postback and web_url — so a quick-reply-style button inside a carousel card isn’t an option on Instagram even where the carousel itself is.
So the limit a customer runs into isn’t Instagram turning the feature off. It’s that the product-card tool in 1CS is built for LINE, Facebook Messenger, and the web chat widget, and doesn’t yet reach Instagram DM or WhatsApp.
Why this trips teams up mid-chat
A team used to LINE or Messenger sending a card automatically the moment a customer asks “มีสีอื่นไหม” expects the same on Instagram — it’s the identical question in a near-identical app. When no card appears, the usual reaction is to assume the AI agent is broken, not that the channel isn’t wired for cards yet, which wastes time debugging a feature that was never going to fire there. Knowing the limit before going live skips that round of confused troubleshooting.
Set up in 1CS
Two tools in 1CS already work on Instagram DM and cover most of what a product card would have shown. First, Reply Templates (คำตอบสำเร็จรูป) let your team save a canned reply with one photo attached, called up by typing / plus a shortcode while answering — one shortcode per product or variant, so whoever’s on shift sends a photo and price in a tap instead of retyping it. Second, turn on the “ส่งรูปภาพ” (send images) switch in the knowledge base section of the AI Agent page: once a product’s photo and details sit in a Knowledge article, the AI agent attaches that photo to its own answer on any connected channel, Instagram included, instead of replying in text alone. Neither scrolls like a carousel, but both put a photo and a price in front of the customer without leaving the chat.
For now, keep the product-card switch itself — “ส่งการ์ดสินค้าแบบรูปภาพ” under Business > Sell products > Products — set up as usual for LINE, Messenger, and the web widget; it simply won’t render anything on an Instagram or WhatsApp conversation, by design, not by a setting you’re missing. Both tools above sit inside 1CS’s AI Agents, and the Thai help center’s Product Card and Quick Reply guide covers every screen for the channels cards do reach.
A product menu to paste into an Instagram DM
Since a carousel isn’t available, send a short numbered list instead of a long paragraph — it reads faster on a phone and the customer can reply with just a number:
Hi! Here’s what we’ve got in [product name] right now:
- [Variant 1] — ฿[price]
- [Variant 2] — ฿[price]
- [Variant 3] — ฿[price] Reply with the number (or more than one) and I’ll get it ready for you — happy to send a photo of any of these first if that helps.
As a recommended default, keep the list at three or four items rather than Meta’s full 10-card ceiling — a numbered text list gets harder to scan the longer it runs, the same reasoning behind sending LINE and Messenger cards in small batches instead of all at once (see how many products to send in one LINE chat message). Once sizes, colors, or an address need confirming before the order’s final, decide whether the AI agent keeps going or hands the cart back to a person — the same handoff call 1CS makes for carousel orders on other channels, just over a numbered list here instead of a card. And since Instagram DM has its own 24-hour reply rule, check Instagram DM’s 24-hour window, and how to still reply before sending this menu to anyone who messaged more than a day ago.
