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Planning a Whatnot show

Recording a Whatnot show in your calendar and reporting, and why Whatnot is the one channel where there is nothing to integrate with rather than an approval still to come.

Updated

You can plan a Whatnot show in Social Studio, promote it with ordinary posts, and keep a record of it beside everything else you publish. You run the show itself in Whatnot.

Whatnot is a different case from every other channel in this product, and it is worth being clear about why. It is not an integration awaiting approval. Whatnot publishes no generally available seller API, so there is nothing for Social Studio to call. The adapter in the product declares zero capabilities for exactly that reason, rather than an aspirational list that would read as a promise.

That means no waiting list to join, no application to submit, and no setting on your account that unlocks it.

BEFORE YOU START

  • A Whatnot seller account, created and managed entirely in Whatnot.
  • Membership of the organisation, and the "administer" permission if you intend to create the session record.
  • A workspace to record the show in.

STEPS

  1. Open Live Commerce from the navigation, or go to /app/live.
  2. Under "Channel accounts", choose the workspace, choose Whatnot, name the account as you would recognise it, and choose "Add channel account". This is a label for your own reference; it connects nothing.
  3. Under "Live sessions", choose the workspace, choose Whatnot, give the show a title, attach the account, and choose "Create draft session".
  4. Plan the posts that promote the show in the calendar, the same way you plan anything else.
  5. Run the show in Whatnot itself, at the time you planned.
  6. Afterwards, use "Cancel" if the show did not happen, so the record does not claim something that never ran.

WHAT YOU SHOULD SEE

A draft session under "Live sessions" carrying the title, the channel and the workspace you chose, and a channel account listed as not_connected. Both are records. Neither has contacted Whatnot.

WHAT THIS WILL NOT DO

  • It will not start, join or end a show on Whatnot.
  • It will not list your products, take orders or count viewers. Those live in Whatnot and are not synchronised.
  • It will not report sales. Anything Whatnot sold is known to Whatnot, and nothing carries it back here.
  • "Start" refuses every time with "Cannot start live session {id}: no connected channel account.", and there is no path in the product that would make an account connected.

WORTH KNOWING

The other supported channel, TikTok Shop LIVE, declares four capabilities it cannot yet perform because its access is pending approval. Whatnot declares none, because there is nothing to approve. If you are choosing where to invest effort, that difference is the honest signal: one is blocked, the other has no door.

IF IT DOES NOT WORK

  • Being redirected to /app means you are not an active member of this organisation.
  • "The selected channel account belongs to a different channel." means you attached a TikTok Shop account to a Whatnot session, or the reverse.
  • "This action was refused (...)" is the action gate, which runs before anything is changed.
  • "Live session {id} already reached a terminal state (cancelled)." means the session was already cancelled or ended, and cannot be moved again.
  • A refusal mentioning permissions means your role does not carry "administer". Reading the page does not need it; creating and moving records does.

COMMON QUESTIONS

Will this work once Whatnot approves Social Studio?

There is no approval outstanding. Whatnot would first have to publish a seller API for anyone to integrate with.

Should I still record the show here?

If you want the show to appear beside the posts that promoted it, yes. The value is one calendar and one record, not a live connection.

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