Telegram Bot - forward slashes necessary?

I’ve disabled privacy mode for my group with the botfather but I still have to use forward slashe prefaced commands otherwise the bot doesn’t trigger on my commands. Any ideas how I can change this?
Thanks

If I understand you right, you mean you have to use commands like this:

/command

In order for things to work. Well this is the correct way and I do not believe there is any way around it. The forward slash lets the bot know that a command is coming, otherwise it is just text.