Triggers
What is a trigger?
A trigger is the event that starts an automation in Superchat. It initiates your automated workflow when specific conditions are met. They can be found by clicking the Add trigger button when creating an automation.
Why are triggers important? (What is the goal behind them?)
They allow you to automate recurring workflows and make them more efficient. Without triggers, automations won't know when to start.
Message Triggers
There are various message triggers that can start an automation, but as an introduction, we are only going to cover the two basic triggers:
New Incoming Message:
Starts the automation for every new incoming message in Superchat. This trigger activates every single time a new message from a customer arrives.
Important to note: Once an automation has been triggered by a New Incoming Message trigger, it must finish running before it can be triggered again.
New Incoming Conversation:
Starts the automation only for the first message of a conversation in Superchat. Only triggered when a contact messages for the very first time, starting a new conversation - ideal for onboarding or welcome automations.
Important to note: If a contacts writes via a different channel (e.g. first WhatsApp, then email) it counts as a different conversation.
New & Reopened Conversations:
This trigger activates when a brand-new conversation is opened, or when a previously closed conversation is reopened because the customer sends a new message. This prevents automations (like auto-replies or routing) from firing repeatedly every time the customer replies.
Event Triggers
These are triggers that fire when a certain event happens. These are less common, and (in most use cases) the only one you would potentially use is:
Manual Trigger:
With a manual trigger, users can start the automation manually via the chat in Superchat, meaning you can decide exactly when an automation runs for a specific contact.
To fire an automation with a manual trigger, simply go to your inbox, select the chat you wish to run the automation in and select the automations button (the one that looks like a little lightning bolt in the toolbar under the textbox - see the screenshot below for further clarification). You can then select the automation you would like to use.
Filters
What is a filter?
A filter is a condition that controls when your automation triggers. The most common filter is a "filter word" - a specific word that must be typed to activate the automation.
You can find them by searching for filter in the search bar that appears when creating a new node.
You can then use the search bar again or scroll through the filter list to find the filter type you need.
Why do you need filters?
Without filters, automations would trigger almost constantly. For example, using the New incoming message trigger without any filters would mean the automation would activate for every single message from customers.
Basic filter information (Message Content Filter, Opening Hours, Labels, Contact Attributes)
Message Content Filter:
Controls when automations trigger based on message text. You can create a Message Content node after your trigger and set filter words to prevent automations from triggering on every message. Available conditions include equals, contains, starts with, ends with, and other filter types (see the table below for more clarification).
This is helpful when you only want to fire a certain automation (or part of an automation) when a customer is asking about pricing. A message content filter can check incoming messages for keywords like “price” or “cost” and only start the automation when those terms are present. This ensures customers who are not asking about pricing are not sent automated responses.
Label Filter:
Labels can be applied to conversations and are very useful for marking when conversations have reached a certain state or when a specific piece of information has been obtained.
When you therefore filter contacts by label, your automation uses the presence (or absence) of that filter to decide whether or not that automation should fire.
You could for instance have an automation that adds the label “Lead captured” after collecting customer details and a filter at the start of the automation that checks for this label. This would therefore stop the automation from firing if that label is present, meaning the customer is not asked for the same information again.
Contact Attribute Filter:
A contact attribute filter lets you control when an automation runs based on information stored on a contact, such as text, numbers, dates, or other selected values. Each contact attribute has a defined data type (for example, text, number, single-select, multi-select, or date), and the filter checks whether the stored value meets your conditions.
You could use this, say, if you had an automation that should only run if a customer is over a certain age. You can save the customer's birth date as a contact attribute, and utilise the contact attribute filter to check whether the date is before a specific cutoff date (for example, today’s date minus 18 years). The automation would then only fire for those over a certain age.
Filter Types
Equals | Will only trigger the automation if the received message is exactly the same as the filter word. Nothing less, nothing more. Just the exact value given. |
Doesn't equal | Will trigger the automation every time the received message doesn't exactly match the filter word (e.g. filter word is "Superchat", every single received message that does not simply say "Superchat" can trigger the automation). |
Contains | Will trigger the automation if the received message contains the filter word, even if 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 | Allows you to choose multiple filter words and the automation will trigger if the received message contains one of those selected filter words (e.g. filter words are "Superchat" and “abc”, client types "1234 Superchat". Since it contains one of the filter words, it will trigger). |
Doesn't contain any of | 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 (e.g. filter words are "Superchat" and “abc”, client types "1234". Since it doesn’t contain one of the filter words, it will trigger). |
Starts with | Will trigger the automation if the start of the message contains the filter word (e.g. if the filter word is "Super", then "Superchat is great" and "Superman is strong" will both trigger the automation). |
Ends with | Will trigger the automation if the end of the received message contains the filter word (e.g. filter word is "Bye", client types "Goodbye", the automation will be triggered since the end of the message contains “bye”). |
Contains all | Will trigger the automation if the received message contains all the selected filter words, and the order of the words is irrelevant. This does not mean one of the given words, but indeed all of them. |
Has any value | Will trigger the automation when the client types anything. This is effectively the equivalent of having no filter at all. |
Has no value | Will trigger the automation when a contact attribute has no value set. This is commonly used in automation stoppers - the message can only pass through the filter if the contact attribute "has no value". Once a value is set, future messages won't trigger the automation until the attribute is cleared again. |