Facebook::Messenger::Error: (#200) This person isn’t available right now

How are you developers doing with your reminder bots for Facebook Messenger, FM? Are you sure those reminders are getting delivered? Check your logs!

FM’s error codes tell me the types of errors there are. The one I hate is the error #200; “This person isn’t available right now”. Would there be a nicer way to know if the user “opted-out” or deleted the conversation? When that happens, this is classed as one of the error #200's. If you’re building a reminder bot for FM, just put that on hold until Facebook implements a webhook for us to know when such event happens.

I wanted to let my users know when their tax is due or to inform them that their last month’s expense is more then this month’s expense. That way they could double check to see if they have entered all their expenses. That means I have to let them know that to receive reminders/notifications, they should not delete the conversation. Another way around this would be if you knew their mobile number or email address.

Ottitia is built using Sidekiq, Redis and Hyperoslo’s Facebook Messenger Gem for Ruby on Rails. You could easily catch an error then do something else:

Viber and Skype do provide such an event, why not Facebook? Based on the code above, you could also create another worker or cronjob to test if the user is available or not.

If there is a webhook for such an event, do let me know. Thanks.