Autoresponders

Autoresponders on Instagram are single message replies that a business can send to a user if they:

• Comment on the business's post or reel
• Reply or react to the business's story
• Mention the business's Instagram handle in their own story
• Comment on the business's boosted and sponsored posts
• Comment on the business's IG Live stories

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By default, autoresponders are enabled once you go live with Instagram. You have to follow the steps below if you wish to disable them.

• For new conversations, the user will enter the Welcome Journey.
• For existing/ongoing conversations, the user will enter the Fallback Journey.

Customizing / Disabling Autoresponders

Creating a journey for Autoresponders

• Go to Journeys under Bot Studio and click the Create Journey button.
• Scroll down to find the journey template named ""Instagram Auto-Responder " and click the User Journey button.

• Go to Manage Variables by clicking the {x} icon of the left on the canvas and select "Global" from the dropdown.
• Click the Add Row button and create a "String" type variable named "autorespondertype".

• Select the event in the Starting Node as "No Event".
• Delete all the text nodes to the right of the "Condition" node and create the journeys you wish to have for each autoresponder type next to the corresponding condition:

1. “reply” (for post comments)
2. “reels_comment” (for reel comments)
3. “story_reply” (for story replies/reactions)
4. “story_mention” (for story mentions)
5. “live_comment” (for IG Live comments)
6. “ad_comment” (for sponsored ad post comments)

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Only one message can be sent as an Autoresponder.

You can request an input from the user in the Autoresponder message and continue the journey ahead from there, but you cannot send multiple replies for the same comment/reply/mention.

• If you don’t wish to send a response for a certain user action i.e. you wish to disable the autoresponder, for example “live_comment”, then don’t attach any journeys to the corresponding condition.
• Insert the journey you want for regular DMs attached to the Else Default option at the very end of the condition node.
• Save & Deploy this journey.

Configuring the Welcome Journey and Fallback journeys

• Go back to Journeys under Bot Studio. You will see 3 Default journeys named "Fallback", "Configuration" and "Welcome Journey" respectively.
• Go to the Welcome Journey and delete the text node connected to the Starting Node.
• Add a Call & Return node from the Actions section in the node list and attach it to the Starting Node.
• Click on the node and select the journey you created for Autoresponders from the dropdown.
• Save & Deploy the Welcome Journey.
• Repeat steps 2 to 5 for the default journey named "Fallback" as well.

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You can further customize your autoresponders by keywords and/or the specific post/reel/story.

Please get in touch with your Gupshup POC or [email protected] for the same.

Handling multiple channels

Please follow the steps to below to differentiate Instagram journeys:

• In your Welcome Journey & Fallback journey, please add a Condition action node right after the starting node.
• De-select the user_input variable and select the channel variable under System variables.
• Set the first condition as the variable channel , the operator as Equal to and the value as instagram. Then, attach the Call & Return node to that condition.

• The Welcome journeys for other channels such as WhatsApp and Web can configured by adding more conditions to the Condition node by setting the first condition as the variable channel , the operator as Equal to and the value as:
  • whatsapp for WhatsApp
  • gipwebchannel for Web
• Then attach the Welcome journeys for those channels with the respective conditions.