Rule Engine
The Rule engine is a powerful tool for building automation rules for incoming messages. You can set up rules that assign messages to different groups of WhatsApp users, tag them and even send them automated answers.
There are two different Rule Engines at your disposal.
- Standard Rule Engine - this rule engine has a user-friendly UI, which helps you quickly and easily build rules for your WhatsApp Inbox. This Engine is the one we will dive into in this article.
- Custom Rule Engine - you will enjoy better flow flexibility when using the Custom Rule engine, but it would require some coding skills. More on the Custom Rule Engine here.
The principle behind the Standard Rule Engine is simple: there is a trigger and an action. Every trigger can initiate multiple actions.
Single and chained actions
The logic is WHEN (something happens) THEN (DO ACTION). You can also chain actions, so every event triggers more than one action.
Five events that act as triggers in the Rule Engine:
- WhatsApp User wrote a message (any message being sent by the user)
- WhatsApp User wrote their very first message (triggered only once in every conversation)
- WhatsApp User wrote specified phrase or keyword (user's message is scanned for the presence of specific words and phrases)
- WhatsApp User wrote a message to an untagged chat
- Chat or Message was tagged with a tag
Actions are responses to Events. When a particular event happens, you can respond to it with an action or even a series of actions. These are the actions available.
- Assign to a user (when triggered, the chat is assigned directly to a user you specify)
- Assign to Group (when triggered, the chat is assigned to a group of users. You can decide what group member will be assigned with the chat - directly or in turns)
- Add Tag to Chat (add tag or tags to chat. You also have the option to remove all OTHER tags, except the ones you assign in this action)
- Remove Tag from Chat (remove a specific tag from chat)
- Remove All Tags from Chat (remove all tags the chat is currently tagged with)
- Reply with an automated response (write a text that will be sent to the user in response to the Event). You can use placeholder variables from "Contact Name" and "Contact Phone Number," define the message header and footer, and add up to three clickable buttons.
After you are finished editing, click Save.
A tool that allows deploying actions directly tied to a client's button click during interaction in the Inbox. Instead of relying on regular processes based on general triggers, button actions allow us to react specifically to a unique event. This way, we can keep our rules in an easy-to-understand order and create chains of actions for many useful use cases.
First, we create a rule with buttons.
After saving the rule, we see this:
By clicking on the "CREATE ACTION" button, we are able to create a special action attached to a click of a button with the specific text (like "Yes, please" or "No, thank you") under a specific message.
What if the client writes "Yes, please"? Will it trigger the button action since the text is the same? The answer is NO. This is the difference - it isn't just the text that triggers the action but the fact that a click on a specific button under a specific message initiated it.
This is what it looks like during the setting of the action:
After this action is set and saved, it is activated immediately.
Last modified 1mo ago