Group Butler short guide

Riccardo, Geo

This short article will describe the basic functions of Group Butler, from adding it to a group to setting up a welcome message or your group rules.

Adding Group Butler to a group chat

To use Group Butler, you obviously need to add it to a group.

It is strongly suggested to add the bot as administrator of your group. In this way, it will be able to ban and kick when necessary, and also it won't have problems receiving updates from the API (for more info, take a look to this section of the bot FAQs).

This is how you add Group Butler to your group as an administrator:

Adding Group Butler to a group as administrator from Telegram Desktop

There's a GIF that describes how to do that from the Android client, you can find it here.

Main commands

Group Butler has a lot of commands. Basic functions include the ability to set up a welcome message for your group, kick and ban members, warn (and ban/kick after a certain number of warnings) users who send a specific media or a telegram.me link, set up the rules of the group. But can you also set up a log channel where you can log all the important events, promote moderators (users with less powers than an administrator), and many other interesting things.

But in this Telegraph we will focus on the basic functions: how to set up a welcome message and the rules of your group, how to ban, kick or warn someone, how to manage the antiflood and antispam settings.

In detail, we will talk about:

managing your group settings
how the antiflood works
how the antispam works
how to manage medias
settings up your group rules
setting up a welcome message
banning, kicking, unbanning and tempbanning
warning users

Managing your group settings

The most important command of Group Butler is "/config": write it in your group to receive in private an inline keyboard that allows you to change the settings of the group.

Here you can find 5 sub-menus (6 if you are the creator of the chat, we will talk about this later):

Menu: change the basic settings of your group. For example: turn the welcome message on, set how many warnings an user can receive before being kicked or banned, choose if the bot should ban every bot added by a non-admin user
Antiflood: turn the antiflood on and off, choose if the bot should ignore some type of message, or change its sensitivity
Antispam: from this menu, you can order the bot to ban (or warn) users who send a telegram.me link or forward a message from a channel
Log channel: from this menu, you can select which events must be logged in your log channel. For more information about log channels, write use the /help command ("Admin commands" button, then "Log channel" button)

Most of the options in each menu are dispalyed in two columns: the left column for the option name, the right column for the clickable emoji to toggle the setting. Click on a button on the left column to read a brief description of the setting!

Bonus for the group creator: the owner of the group will see a "Moderators" button too, at the bottom of the keyboard. More info about mederators here.

How the antiflood works

What does "flood" mean? An user is flooding when he's sending a big amount of messages in a short time. Group Butler can detect when an user is flooding, and can kick or ban him.

You can turn the antiflood on and off from the configuration keyboard: there's an "antiflood" menu in it. Moreover, from this menu you can set the antiflood sensitivity (how many messages are allowed in 5 seconds), and choose if the bot should ignore some types of messages.

For example:

With this antiflood configuration, the bot will ban members who send more than 5 messages in 5 seconds, but will ignore images and forwarded messages.

Obviously, administrators and mods are ignored by the antiflood.

How the antispam works

Group Butler can detect when an user sends a message containing a telegram.me or a t.me link, or when a message from a channel is forwarded in the group.

From the "antispam" menu, you can make the bot warn, ban or kick users who triggers the antispam system.

For example:

With this antispam configuration, Group Butler will warn members who shares a telegram.me (t.me, tlgr.me and telegram.dog are detected too). They will be banned when the bot gives them the 3rd warning. Messages forwarded from channels, with this configuration, are ignored.

You can force the bot to directly ban users as soon as a spam message it detected, by setting the number of warnings to 1.

Admins can whitelist some links; whitelisted links won't trigger the antispam. More info here.

How to manage medias

At this point, it's pretty straight forward. From the "media" menu of the configuration keyboard you can decide which type of media the bot must forbid in the group, and how many warnings a user must be given before being kicked or banned.

Setting up your group rules

It's really easy. You just have to use in your group the "/setrules" command, followed by the rules you want to save.

To get the group rules, use the "/rules" command.

By default, the bot replies to "/rules" in the group. You can force the bot to answer in private from the configuration keyboard ("menu" button, then "rules" button). Anyway, when used by an administrator or moderator, "/rules" command will always answer in the group.

Moreover, do not forget that if a normal user uses this command when it is configured to be answered in private, and he has never started Group Butler before, he won't receive the rules (bots can't initiate a conversation with an user, therefor the user must start the bot first).

Supports markdown: if the bot keeps answering you with "your message breaks the markdown", please take a look to this guide about a correct use of the markdown formattation. I also suggest you to check this two collections of examples of a wrong use of the markdown: example 1 and example 2.

Using a GIF/sticker as welcome message: you can also use a GIF or a sticker as welcome message. To set it, just send the GIF/sticker and reply to it with "/welcome". If you are setting a GIF, its caption will be saved too.

Setting up a welcome message

To set a welcome message for your group, use the "/welcome" command followed by your welcome message.

Important: the welcome message is disabled by default. To turn it on, you must enable it from the configuration menu ("menu" button, then "welcome message" button).

But what if I want to welcome new members by name? Group Butler supports a set of placeholders that will be replaced with specific informations about the user/group.

The most common placeholders are $name (replaced with the first name of the new member) and $username (replaced with the username of the new member, or by a "-" if the user dosn't have an username set).

Strongly suggested: do not format placeholders with the markdown. For example, if your welcome message is "*Hello $name, welcome!*" and the name of a new member includes a *, the welcome message can't be sent. This is how Telegram's markdown works and we can't do nothing about that.

Examples of welcome messages that you should avoid:

/welcome Hello *$name*!
/welcome Hello _$name_!
/welcome Hello `$name`!

These situations are described in the examples linked above too, so please, if you are facing issues, check them.

Important feature: you can add a "read the rules" inline button to your welcome message. When a users taps/clicks on it, he will be redirected to Group Butler and prompted to start it. As soon as the user taps on the "start" button, the bot will send him the rules of the group.

This is how it works:

Perfect if you have your rules setted up.

To add this special button to your welcome message, you must enable it from the configuration keyboard.

Enter the "menu" sub-menu, and enable this option:

Banning, kicking, tempbanning and unbanning

You can use Group Butler to ban, kick, unban or tempban users from your group.

Ban: the user won't be able to join the group again, unless he's unbanned or added by an admin
Kick: the user is removed from the group, but will be able to join again
Unban: unbanning a banned user allows him to join the group again
Tempban: ban an user for a given amount of time. When the tempban expires, the user is notified and unbanned

Usage examples:

/ban, /kick and /unban work by reply, by username, by text mention or by ID.

/ban @username -> ban an user by username
/ban 23677331 -> ban an user by user ID
/ban Riccardo -> ban users without a username by text mention

/tempban works only by reply.

/tempban 1d 2h -> ban the user for 1 day and 2 hours
/tempban 36 -> ban an user for 36 hours

When the tempban ends, both group and user are notified with a message, and the user is unbanned (but not added back, because bots can't add users).

Warning users

You can give warnings to the group members with "/warn". Warnings are like yellow cards: once an user receives a specific number of warnings (default: 3), he's banned or kicked, according to the group settings.

Warnings-related commands work only by reply.

Commands:

/warn: warn an user
/user: check how many warnings an user have received
/nowarns: remove all the warnings received by an user. Removes also the warnings received for spam or forbidden media (they are counted separately)
/removewarns: remove all the warnings received by all the members of the group

Bonus: silent warnings. For admins who find the answer of the bot to the "/warn" command annoying, there's the "/sw" command. It gives the warn, but it is counted silently and the bot doesn't reply with the standard message. "/sw" can be placed wherever you want in your message.

The maximum number of warnings an user can receive can be changed from the "menu" button of the configuration keyboard:

Warnings-related button of the menu keyboard

Final notes

To get a complete overview of all the function of Group Butler, check its /help message.

Other resources and guides

@gb_tutorials, where tutorials or guides about Group Butler are usually posted
@groupbutler_ch and @groupbutler_beta, where updates are posted
Short guide about the @admin command
How to use the "/block" command
Description of what moderators, inline buttons and the whitelist are

Credits

Thanks a lot to Geo. He wrote most of this guide.