When someone messages your WhatsApp Business number, Meta opens a 24-hour customer-service window for that number. While it is open you may reply with anything: free text, images, documents, buttons. No template, no approval, no category.
Outside the window Meta refuses free-form sends with error 131047 — *Outside the 24-hour reply window*. Note that Meta often accepts the request first and rejects it moments later, so a message can read as sent and still never arrive.
What MsgOrb does about it
- The workflow builder lets you send free-form with no template selected. Before queueing an immediate send it checks how many of the group's members have written to you in the last 24 hours, and warns you if some or none of them have. It is a warning, not a block — MsgOrb cannot know Meta's verdict in advance.
- Attachments, quick-reply buttons and link buttons configured on a workflow are free-form features. They are held and delivered when a member replies and asks for them.
- Smart Auto-Replies only ever run inside an open window, because they answer an inbound message.
- The notification webhook refuses to send free-form at all in normal operation, and requires an approved template.
Reading it on the Delivery page
A failure caused by the window reads: *Outside the 24-hour reply window — this message needs an approved template, or the recipient must message you first.* MsgOrb marks it permanent and does not retry, because the window will not reopen on its own.