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Build inbox automations using Workflows
Build inbox automations using Workflows

Use background workflows to automate repetitive tasks for your human support team.

Beth-Ann Sher avatar
Written by Beth-Ann Sher
Updated over 3 months ago

Build inbox automations using Workflows to automate repetitive tasks for your team in the inbox. You'll also be able to make use of conversation actions (tag, close, assign, etc.) and conditional rules or branching.

Create an inbox automation

To create inbox automations using Workflows, go to Automation > Workflows and click + New workflow in the top right.

You can use one of the prebuilt templates or build a workflow from scratch by choosing a trigger. Common triggers to use for inbox automations are:

  • Customer opens a new conversation in the Messenger

  • Customer sends their first message

  • Customer sends any message

Decide when the workflow should trigger based on your criteria. For example, this workflow will only trigger for Users on the Pro plan with a monthly spend greater than 500. 👇

Once you're in the Workflows builder, use the + icon to add actions, such as:

Actions in a path are prioritized from top to bottom and will occur in that order.

Here are some more examples of inbox automations you can try out.

Apply rules to an existing workflow

Instead of creating a new workflow for each inbox automation and defining rules at the trigger level, you can Apply rules to an existing workflow path and then define the conditions which must be met.

If you use the Apply rules action, the background workflow will look through each path and execute any actions which match the rules you set. This means the workflow can still trigger for other customers, but certain actions will only be taken if they match the rules.

For example, if a workflow routes a conversation to your Support team, you could apply rules which check each path and take the following actions IF:

  • Plan is Premium > Apply SLA Premium Support

  • Message content contains project > Tag conversation with Projects

Learn how to use the Workflows builder for all your automations.

How orchestration works

Orchestration is what workflow will run in what order. This explains how workflows with customer-facing content and background workflows work side-by-side.

Customer-facing workflows:

  • Only one workflow with customer-facing content can be running at any point.

  • If the conditions of the conversation change then another workflow with customer-facing content can jump in.

Note: If, for example, a conversation matches 2 Workflows:

Workflow A - Customer facing workflow which snoozes the conversation

Workflow B - Customer facing workflow that is triggered by a teammate closing the conversation.

If Workflow A snoozes the conversation and a teammate manually closes the conversation, Workflow A will be interrupted. If you have a Workflow B that is supposed to trigger on conversations close, this Workflow B will not trigger, since that workflow A is technically active at the time the conversation is closed, another end-user facing workflow can't be triggered from the close action.

Background workflows:

  • All background workflows will run in a conversation if the targeting rules match the conversation. This means you can run multiple background automations at the same time in one conversation (common for tagging).

  • All assignments from background workflows will be deferred until the conversation is moved out of bot inbox, or the matching customer-facing workflow has finished.

  • You can filter by Background to find your background-only automations. These also include an icon next to the title to help identify which Workflows will run in the background:

Learn how to prioritize the order your Workflows run in.


💡Tip

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