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Sferum in MAX: what it offers and where a school needs its own bot

October 26, 2026 · Command CHBT · MAX, Education

Since the 2025/26 school year, Sferum has been the learning space inside the MAX messenger: class chats, calls, the gradebook and school services. Schools, kindergartens and clubs keep asking the same things: what exactly is in it, can they put their own bot into a class chat, and how to “create a bot in Sferum”. The short answer: the Sferum bot is the platform’s own bot and you cannot plug yours into it, but an institution can set up its own bot in MAX, and parents will message it in a private chat. Below is what official sources say about Sferum as of 26 October 2026, what it lacks, and how to launch a school bot in MAX in one evening. A disclaimer: we build the CHBT bot builder and have nothing to do with Sferum or VK.

What Sferum in MAX is

Sferum is an information and communication learning platform that is part of the “My School” federal information system (Government Resolution No. 1241 of 13.07.2022). The Sferum learning profile used to live in VK Messenger. On 18 August 2025 the Ministry of Education announced that Sferum had completed its integration into the national messenger MAX: a pilot in six regions from 25 August 2025, the rest from 15 September, and, according to the ministry as of 9 October 2025, all 89 regions.

The learning profile opens in the same MAX app people use for everyday messaging — there is no separate Sferum app to install. Teachers carry a teacher badge, and the Sferum bot inside MAX helps set up the profile.

According to VK, by June 2026 Sferum had 26 million users, and all educational organizations, including kindergartens, supplementary education and colleges, are connected to the platform. These are VK press office figures with no independent confirmation.

What it offers: chats, calls, gradebook, “Reminder”

According to Ministry of Education and VK announcements for 2025–2026, the MAX learning profile includes:

chats with the teacher, the class and parents, group calls, meetings and broadcasts, an interactive whiteboard;
a link to the electronic gradebook and “My School” services: grades, timetable, homework;
“File collection”, “Student assistant”, “Rosobrnadzor assistant”, exchange of school certificates and documents;
“Reminder” — since September 2026 a teacher can send reminders to students and parents (RIA Novosti, 01.09.2026);
safe mode for students: “Contacts” privacy settings, calls and chat invitations only from people they know, a “Report” button.

Is Sferum mandatory? It is important not to mix up three things: Sferum is an educational communication platform; MAX is an information exchange service with built-in educational functions; an institution’s bot in MAX is the institution’s own separate tool and does not become part of Sferum. Since 15 May 2026, in e-learning and distance learning under basic general education programmes and secondary vocational education programmes, interaction between participants in educational relations is organized through the multifunctional information exchange service (clause 4.1 of the Rules, Government Resolution No. 1678 as amended by No. 517). Using the service in the educational process and an obligation for every parent to register in a particular messenger are not the same thing: we have not found a separate rule obliging every parent to register in Sferum. For clubs and supplementary education, clause 4.1 does not directly set a similar requirement, but a particular organization may have its own mandatory rules.

What Sferum does not have

Sferum is built for people who are already enrolled and for people talking to each other. According to public descriptions as of 26.10.2026, it lacks what institutions usually look for when they search for “a chatbot for a school”:

Task	In Sferum
An automatic answer to a typical parent question at 10 pm	No: a teacher answers in person, or nobody does
Answers from the charter, admission rules, price list of paid services	No
Sign-up for a club or a trial lesson	No: Sferum is only for enrolled students
Payment for a paid club	No
The institution’s own bots	Bots in the learning profile are federal: Sferum’s own, “Pushkin Card”, “Student assistant”

Hence the role of your own bot: it does not replace the class chat or Sferum, it takes over the repetitive personal questions that would otherwise reach the class teacher and the school secretary all day long.

Can you add a bot to a Sferum class chat

As of 26 October 2026 we found no public rules that would allow an institution to add a third-party bot to a Sferum class chat — neither on sferum.ru nor in Ministry of Education announcements. The MAX platform in general supports bots in group chats (the chats section of the dev.max.ru documentation), but the learning profile, the students’ safe mode and permissions in class chats are governed by Sferum, not by the bot owner.

For a CHBT bot the question is settled technically too: in MAX it replies only in a private chat with a person and does not handle group chats or channels. This is deliberate. In a shared class chat parents see each other’s replies, while questions about a certificate, payment or a child’s illness are personal.

You cannot “create a bot in Sferum” in the sense of your own bot inside the learning profile. You can set up the institution’s bot on the MAX platform and give parents a link to it — in the class chat, on the school website, in the VK community.

Your own school bot in MAX: what it does

CHBT has a template for this: “School certificates and timetable”. After /start a parent sees a menu: “Order a certificate”, “Bell schedule”, “First-grade admission”, “Clubs and sports”, “Call a person”.

Certificate. The type by button — “Proof of enrollment” or “Other” (then the parent writes which one), then the student’s surname and first name and the class. The request reaches the bot’s operators as a notification “Certificate (type): student, class”, and the parent gets the deadline and pick-up place — you fill these in yourself.
Timetable, admission, clubs — placeholder texts that you replace with your own. After an answer the bot asks “Any other questions?”, and text that misses the buttons gets the same prompt instead of silence.
“Call a person” moves the conversation to Conversations: a staff member replies in the same MAX chat, and the bot stays silent meanwhile.

The template works without AI on any plan. If you later add an AI agent for answers from school documents, a bot with this template already runs in the “AI in Russia” mode: Yandex models answer in Yandex Cloud, and foreign models are not used in it.

How to launch: five steps

A bot on the MAX platform. Legal entities, sole proprietors and self-employed residents of Russia can connect to the MAX for Business platform: the organization profile is verified and the bot goes through moderation. Name the bot after the school. You will need the bot token in step 3. Details are in the article how to create a bot in MAX.
A CHBT project with the template. Sign up at app.chbt.io with the “School certificates and timetable” template — the flow is created right away and the editor opens.
Connect the channel. “Channels” → MAX → “Connect MAX”, paste the token. CHBT checks it and subscribes to the bot’s events itself — the bot works via the MAX for Business platform API.
Texts. Replace the placeholders for the timetable, admission and clubs, and fill in the deadline and place for certificates. Invite the secretary in the “Access” section so requests reach them too — from the Basic plan.
Test and share the link. “Check flow” opens a test chat in the editor; then find the bot in MAX and tap “Start”. Post the bot link in the class chat, on the website and in the VK community.

The same flow replies unchanged in VK and in the website chat once you connect them in “Channels”.

What matters for a state school

When providing public and municipal services and fulfilling a state assignment, the law restricts the use of foreign messengers for transferring citizens’ personal data and payment information (Part 8, Article 10 of Law 149-FZ); the rule does not introduce a general ban on all communication, but a parent’s messenger ID may also be personal data. In its letter No. VZh-2122/15 of 28.10.2025 the Ministry of Education gives examples of Russian services that can be used for communication with participants in educational relations: VK, Odnoklassniki, RUTUBE, MAX. So for official communication with parents we recommend MAX, VK and the website chat to a state school. Schools covered by Part 1.1, Article 10 of Law 8-FZ create official pages in the established manner (there are exceptions); if the school has an official VK community, the bot can be connected to it.

CHBT’s main servers and database are located in Russia (Moscow); Telegram messages pass through our node abroad. The school template sends parents’ questions to no AI models at all. If you add an AI agent, a bot in the “AI in Russia” mode answers on Yandex models — Alice AI LLM Flash by default for 1 credit, YandexGPT 5.1 Pro optionally for 3 — with Yandex request logging turned off. The mode only restricts the choice of models and does not by itself guarantee that data processing complies with 152-FZ. More on school scenarios is on the school chatbot page; which of this are the school’s own legal obligations is best checked with a lawyer.

Limitations to know in advance

The bot does not write first. In MAX a bot can reply only to someone who opened a chat with it. You cannot message a list of parents’ phone numbers.
Broadcasts — from the Basic plan, text only and only to people who have already written to the bot.
Files. In MAX the bot sends text and buttons; give a form or a timetable image as a link to the website.
Not a class chat. The bot does not post to Sferum chats and does not read them.
The Free plan — 30 different people a month and one operator: enough to test the flow, not enough for a school. Basic is 650 ₽/month per bot, with no conversation limit, staff and broadcasts.

“School certificates and timetable” template School chatbot How to create a bot in MAX A MAX bot without a programmer