Auto-Replies

At a glance

Location	Sidebar → Auto Replies (Zap icon)
Plan	All plans, including the free tier
Related features	3

Automatic answers to an incoming WhatsApp message, built as rules you order yourself. A rule can fire on a keyword or a regular expression, on an AI intent you describe in words, on a first-ever message from someone, on business hours, on a label, on a click of a smart link, or on someone who received a campaign. An AI intent rule has a Match strictness setting and a Test Intent box where you try a sample message and see whether it would match, how confident that match was and what it cost, plus an Improve Prompt button that rewrites your intent description for you to apply or discard. The action can be a written reply, a quick reply, a label, a proactive bot, or an AI reply, and a rule whose action is an AI reply warns you when the AI Chatbot itself is switched off, because nothing would be written. Rules are evaluated in priority order and the first match wins, unless you allow several rules to apply. Each rule can also carry a cooldown per contact, a cap on how many times it may fire per contact per day, a random delay before answering so the reply does not land the same second, an expiry after a number of days, and label conditions that require or forbid a label on the chat. An AI reply rule can stay in the conversation for a set number of minutes, answering follow-ups that carry no keyword at all, and it steps aside as soon as someone from your team answers in that chat. Only the newest message from a contact is answered, so a burst of messages does not produce a burst of replies, and the same incoming message is evaluated once even though more than one server is running. Business hours have their own tab with a timezone and a weekly schedule, and the Activity Log tab shows what each incoming message produced, including the reason when it produced no reply at all.

How to use

1. Open Auto-Replies from the sidebar.
2. Click "Add Rule" and give it a name.
3. Choose the trigger: keyword or regex, an AI intent you describe, first contact, business hours, a label, a smart link, or a campaign.
4. For an AI intent, set Match strictness and try a sample message with Test Intent before you save; Improve Prompt can rewrite your description first.
5. Choose the action: a written reply, a quick reply, a label, a proactive bot, or an AI reply.
6. Open Advanced Options for priority, cooldown, a daily cap per contact, a random delay, an expiry and label conditions.
7. Save and enable the rule.
8. Set your opening times on the Business Hours tab, and use the Activity Log tab to see what fired and why something did not.

Related features

• Chat Flows
• AI Chatbot
• Quick Replies

FAQ

• How do I set up auto-replies?
• Can I create an away message?
• How to auto-respond to keywords?
• How do I test whether my AI intent will match?
• Why did my auto-reply not fire?
• How do I stop a rule repeating to the same contact?
• Does the auto-reply keep answering after the first message?
• What happens if a teammate replies while the rule is answering?