Skip to main content
The Community API lets you sync social media conversations with your customer service platform. This guide covers:
  • Retrieving and replying to direct messages across Instagram, Facebook, and X
  • Retrieving and replying to comments across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube
  • Analyzing sentiment distribution and trends over time
API update: DMs have moved from conversation-level to message-level interactions. GET /community_interactions now returns one result per message instead of per conversation. See the migration changelog for full details.

Use cases

Customer service teams use the Community API to connect social conversations directly into their support workflows.

Support Ticket Routing

Filter DMs by keyword to surface complaints and automatically route them to the right support queue in Zendesk or Salesforce.

Comment Moderation

Pull comments across Facebook and Instagram posts to review, tag, and respond without leaving your existing tooling.

Sentiment Monitoring

Track positive and negative sentiment trends over time to catch issues early and measure the impact of campaigns or product launches.

Before you start

Make sure you have:
  • API access token with permissions to the relevant brand.
  • Brand ID for the account you want to query.
See API Quickstart for more details.

Use Case 1: Retrieve and Respond to Direct Messages

Filter DMs by platform, keyword, and date range to surface messages that need attention, then reply directly through the API.

Step 1: Retrieve DMs

GET /community_interactions returns a list of individual messages. Each result is a single message with its content in text and a conversation_id linking it to the thread it belongs to.
See the Get Community Interactions endpoint reference for the full parameter list.
Parameters
Response example:
INSTAGRAM_CONVERSATION includes story replies and story mentions, not just direct messages. Check the story_reply and story_mention fields in the full thread (Step 2) to distinguish them.

Step 2: Get the Full Thread (optional)

If you need the full message history for a conversation, use the conversation_id from Step 1. This step is optional — message content is already available in text from Step 1.
See the Get Interaction Messages endpoint reference.
Response example:

Step 3: Reply to a Conversation

Send a reply using the conversation_id from Step 1.
Instagram and Facebook do not allow replies to DMs received more than 7 days ago through third-party platforms.

Use Case 2: Retrieve and Respond to Comments

Use the same GET /community_interactions endpoint to retrieve comments across platforms, then reply to them directly through the API.

Step 1: Retrieve Comments

Filter by types to pull comments across platforms. Use the same parameters as Use Case 1. The only difference is the types values.
See the Get Community Interactions endpoint reference for the full parameter list.
Each result includes an id you’ll use to reply in Step 2, and platform-specific comment identifiers (e.g. facebook_comment_id) in the full comment detail.
If you need comments scoped to a single post, use the platform-specific comment endpoints with a media_id. First get the post’s id from the Library API, then pass it as media_id.
Then fetch comments for that post:
Replace facebook_comments with instagram_comments, tweets, tiktok_comments, or youtube_comments for other platforms. See the endpoint references for Facebook comments, Instagram comments, TikTok comments, and YouTube comments.

Step 2: Reply to Comments

Use the facebook_comment_id (or platform equivalent) from Step 1 as parent_comment_id to thread the reply under the original comment.
Facebook does not allow replies to comments received more than 7 days ago through third-party platforms.
Replace facebook_comments with instagram_comments, tweets, tiktok_comments, or youtube_comments for other platforms. Response example:

Use Case 3: Analyze Community Sentiment

Track interaction volume, sentiment, and top keywords across platforms. All endpoints support multiple brands in a single request.

Sentiment Distribution

POST /sentiment_distribution_stats returns the positive, neutral, and negative breakdown for a brand’s interactions. Filter by date range, platform type, and other attributes.
See the Get Sentiment Distribution Stats endpoint reference.
Step 1: Map Your Parameters Step 2: Make the API Call
Response returns a data object with sentiment counts broken down per platform.

Sentiment Time Series

POST /sentiment_time_series returns per-platform sentiment data over time. Use this to chart sentiment trends across a date range.
See the Get Sentiment Time Series endpoint reference.
Step 1: Map Your Parameters Step 2: Make the API Call
Response returns a data object with per-platform sentiment counts indexed by date.

Volume Time Series

POST /volume_time_series returns interaction volume over time, broken down by interaction type per date. Use this to track how many comments, messages, and mentions your brand receives across platforms.
DM messages are now included in volume calculations. If your brand has active DMs, expect higher counts compared to previous results.
See the Get Volume Time Series endpoint reference.
Step 1: Map Your Parameters Step 2: Make the API Call
Response example:
Each key is a date. The value breaks down volume by interaction type, with total as the sum across all types for that day.

Top Keywords

POST /top_keywords returns the most frequent keywords from community interactions, ranked by total mentions. Each keyword includes a sentiment breakdown so you can see whether mentions are positive, neutral, or negative.
See the Get Top Keywords endpoint reference.
Step 1: Map Your Parameters Step 2: Make the API Call
Response example:
Each key is a keyword string. The values show how many interactions containing that keyword were negative, neutral, positive, and the total count.

Limitations

  • All channels: Group DMs are not supported.
  • Instagram: Brands cannot reply to DMs received more than 7 days ago. Deleted comments are not reported back to Dash Social.
  • Facebook: Brands cannot reply to DMs received more than 7 days ago. Deleted comments are not reported back to Dash Social.
  • TikTok: @mentions in replies are rendered as plain text without linking to the mentioned profile.
  • X (Twitter): Deleted comments are not reported back to Dash Social.
  • YouTube: Only root-level comments are imported. Replies to comments are not supported. Native emojis are not rendered when replying via the API.