What starts an Avox automation - keyword, any message, business hours, no-reply follow-up, new contact and tag added - and when one runs.
A trigger is what starts an automation. You pick it in step 1 (Type) of the
Create automation wizard and set it up in step 2
(Name). An automation's trigger type is fixed once it's created; for a
Keyword match automation you can still edit the keywords on the canvas.
"Fires when a customer's message contains one of your chosen words or phrases."
Settings:Keywords - type a word or phrase and press Enter (or type a comma) to add it
as a chip. Click a chip's x to remove it, or press Backspace in the empty field to remove the
last one; the same keyword can't be added twice. Add at least one ("Add at least one keyword").
You can change the keywords later right on the canvas's trigger box.
Matching: the automation fires when the message contains any one of the keywords, anywhere
in the text. Upper and lower case don't matter, so hours matches "What are your HOURS?".
Tip: a short keyword matches inside longer words too - book also matches "booking" and
"notebook". Use a phrase when you need to be specific.
"Fires only when a customer messages you outside your set opening hours."
Settings:Opens at and Closes at in 24-hour time (defaults 09:00 and 18:00), and a
Timezone. The wizard detects your device's timezone ("Detected from this device: ...") and
lists every timezone with its UTC offset, ordered west to east.
Matching: Avox compares the time each message arrives with your hours, using the UTC offset
shown next to the timezone you picked. The automation fires outside the window and stays quiet
inside it.
Overnight hours work too. With Opens at 22:00 and Closes at 06:00, the automation
fires between 06:00 and 22:00.
Summary: the automation shows as "Fires outside 09:00 to 18:00" (with your own times).
"Fires only on a contact's very first-ever message to you - a real welcome message."
Settings: none.
Matching: fires when a contact has no earlier incoming message in Avox. Messages synced in
from the WhatsApp Business App count as earlier messages, so a customer whose past chats were
synced isn't treated as new. A contact who was only synced from your address book, with no
messages yet, still is. See Coexistence sync.
"Fires if nobody's replied to a customer after a set number of minutes."
Settings:Minutes to wait before following up (30 by default). Set 1,380 minutes
(23 hours) or less, so the follow-up always lands inside Meta's
24-hour messaging window. Avox only follows up within that window.
Summary: "Fires after 30 minutes of no reply" (with your own wait). In the Your
automations table this trigger is listed as Follow-up (no reply).
Matching: Avox checks every minute for contacts whose latest message is one they sent,
older than your wait time, with nothing sent back since - not by your team in the
Inbox, not from the WhatsApp Business App on your phone, not by the Avox API, and not by
another automation. When it finds one, the follow-up runs.
Once per unanswered message. Each unanswered message gets at most one follow-up. If the
customer writes again, that new message starts its own wait.
Recent conversations only. Avox looks at messages from your wait time up to two hours beyond
it, so switching the automation on doesn't send follow-ups into old conversations.
Connected numbers only. A number that is paused or disconnected is skipped until it's
connected again.
The one-hour cooldown below applies too.
The premade No-reply follow-up automation (named "Follow-up nudge") is the quickest start: it
sends "Sorry for the wait - just checking in, we'll have an answer for you shortly!" and tags the
contact followed_up. Change the text to fit your business.
"Fires when a specific tag gets applied to a contact - chain automations off one another."
Settings:Tags to watch for - one or more tags, added as chips. "Fires once, the moment
any of these tags gets applied to a contact - including by another automation's own "Tags &
categories" step." Add at least one ("Add at least one tag to watch for").
Matching: fires when an automation's Tags & categories step adds one of these tags to a
contact who didn't already have it. Upper and lower case don't matter. Re-adding a tag the
contact already has doesn't fire it again.
Chains: one automation can tag a contact, which starts a Tag added automation, which can tag
again. Avox limits how deep such a chain goes, so automations can't set each other off in a loop.
No incoming message: a Tag added automation starts from a tag, not a message, so a
Condition in it never matches and Mark as read has nothing to mark. Use sends and tags.
Summary: "Fires when tagged: VIP" (with your own tags).
Each new incoming message is checked once. A message Meta delivers twice is still only checked
once. (No-reply follow-up automations are the exception: they're checked every minute
instead, as described above.)
2
Avox finds the first match
Avox goes through the Switchboard's switched-on automations from oldest to newest and picks
the first whose trigger matches. Only that one automation runs for the message.
3
The one-hour cooldown is checked
An automation runs at most once per hour for the same contact. If it already ran for this
contact in the last hour, nothing runs for this message. This stops a fast back-and-forth from
turning one automation into a stream of replies.
4
The actions run
The actions run in order. Each message sent spends credits.
Because the oldest matching automation wins, keep your most specific automations (for example a
Keyword match) older than broad ones such as Any message, or the broad one can answer first.
No active subscription - automations send only while the Switchboard has an active plan.
Out of credits - sending stops until credits reset (AVX-3076).
Connection paused for billing - when a canceled subscription pauses your connection, each
automation that would have run is recorded on Logs as a failed automation_skipped
event with "This automation didn't fire - the connection is paused because this Switchboard's
subscription was canceled." Filter Logs by that event type to see them all. See
AVX-3082.
Connection not connected - while a number is paused or still being set up, its automations
don't run. They pick up again with the next message after it's connected.
On cooldown - the first matching automation already ran for this contact in the last hour.
Switched off - only automations with the Active switch on are checked.
Automations reply to messages as they arrive - or, for a no-reply follow-up, within 23 hours of the
customer's message - so their replies go out inside WhatsApp's
24-hour messaging window, where free-form messages are allowed.