Introduction
All automations start with a trigger, and one of the most commonly used triggers is “New incoming message”. This trigger will activate the automation every single time a new message from a customer arrives.
Most people don’t want automations triggering that often, though.
The solution for this problem is using a filter word, so that the automation will only trigger when a specific word is typed.
In the example below, we used the word “Superchat” as a filter word for our automation. This means that the automation will only trigger whenever a customer writes us a Whatsapp message that says exactly “Superchat”.
Setting your own filter word
To create a filter word, create a new “Message Content” node right after the trigger and click on top of it to bring up the menu on the right.
You can type your filter word in the “Enter text” field and then continue building your automation from there. This way, the automation will only trigger when this word is typed.
Setting filter conditions
You can also set different conditions for the filter using the dropdown menu below:
Here you can see what each condition does:
equals → Will only trigger the automation if the received message is exactly the same one as the filter word.
doesn’t equal → Will trigger the automation every time the received message doesn’t match the filter word (E.g. filter word is “Superchat”, every single received message that is not exactly equal to “Superchat” can trigger the automation).
contains → Will trigger the automation if the received message contains the filter word, even if it other words are present.
doesn’t contain → Will trigger the automation if the received message doesn’t contain the filter word at all (E.g. filter word is “Superchat”, every single received message that doesn’t contain “Superchat” within it will trigger the automation).
contains one of → This option allows you to choose multiple filter words and the automation will only be triggered if the received message contains one of those selected filter words (E.g. filter word is “Superchat”, client types “abc 1234 Superchat”. Since it contains the filter word, it will trigger).
doesn’t contain any of → This option allows you to choose multiple filter words, and the automation will only be triggered if the received message doesn’t contain any of those words.
contains all → Will trigger the automation if the received message contains all the selected filter words, and the order of the words is irrelevant.
starts with → Will trigger the automation if the start of the message contains the filter word. (E.g. filter word is “Super”, client types “Superchat”, then later “Superman”. Both words would trigger the automation since both start with “Super”).
ends with → Will trigger the automation if the end of the received message contains the filter word.
has any value → Will trigger the automation when the client types anything. This is virtually the equivalent of having no filter at all.