Dealerships have the ability to bring an existing phone number from their legacy provider to be utilized as a team number in ExpertConnect. This is different from porting in the fact that the number will stay owned by your legacy carrier. This process simply gives ExpertConnect permission to use the phone number for the team's WhatsApp profile.

This process can be combined with the option to verify the same number for outbound phone calls, known as Verified Caller ID.

Benefits of Bringing Your Own Number

• This process is much faster than the timeline for enabling a new ExpertConnect number for WhatsApp. Bringing an existing phone number to WhatsApp takes less than one hour, whereas the process to approve a new number for WhatsApp can take 2-3 weeks. 
• Your dealership retains ownership of the phone number with your legacy provider.
• The number can continue to be used with the legacy device for SMS messages and phone calls (not WhatsApp).
• This solution allows dealers to use phone numbers in area code locations that ExpertConnect does not support. 

Process to Bring Your Own Number

1. Notify a member of our Dealer Success Team that you would like to do this. You can email expertconnect@johndeere.com. 
2. We will schedule a 30-minute Zoom call to complete the verification process.
   1. Please invite an authorized administrator of the dealership's Facebook Business Manager. During the meeting, this person will be asked to login to Facebook using their credentials. 
   2. WhatsApp requires that this process be completed on the same IP address as the ExpertConnect developer portal. To accomplish this, we will use Zoom's ‘Control Screen’ feature to login to your Facebook account on our computer. Once the process is complete, all personal and login data will be cleared from our computer. 
3. Once the verification meeting is complete, the ExpertConnect team will enable the number for WhatsApp within 1 hour of the meeting.

Considerations

• The phone number cannot be registered to a WhatsApp account when starting this process. Please delete any existing WhatsApp account for this phone number before meeting with ExpertConnect. 
• This process will require you to receive a verification code via SMS or phone call to the phone number. Ensure someone is available to answer the call and repeat a verification code during the meeting. 

Live Verification Meeting

WhatsApp requires that this process is completed on the same IP address as the ExpertConnect developer portal. To accomplish this, we will use Zoom's ‘Control Screen’ feature to login to your Facebook account on our computer. Once the process is complete, all personal and login data will be cleared from our computer. 

Once controlling our screen, your Facebook administrator will complete the following steps to create a new WABA for ExpertConnect (WhatsApp Business Account). 

1. ExpertConnect will initiate Facebook login page to complete process. 
2. Dealership administrator will login to dealership's Facebook account using credentials. 
3.  Fill-out company information. 
   1. Company Name
   2. Business Email
   3. Business Website 
   4. Country
4. Create the WhatsApp Profile
   1. WhatsApp Display Name
   2. Business Profile ‘About’ section (optional)
   3. Business Description (optional)
   4. Business Website (Optional)
   5. Business Email (Optional)
   6. Business Address (Optional)
5. Complete verification call 
   1. Choose whether to receive code via SMS or phone call. Once initiated, you will have one minute to type the code into Facebook. 
6. Once completed, ExpertConnect will enable the phone number to the team in ExpertConnect within one hour. 

Forwarding Inbound Calls 

This process will not automatically route inbound phone calls through ExpertConnect, only WhatsApp messages. If you would like to track phone calls in ExpertConnect, you need to work with your IT Department to set-up call forwarding from the phone number to an ExpertConnect number that we provide.