An automation rule is three things, in this order: one event, the conditions that must be true, and the actions to run. Nothing else. If you can say "when X happens, and Y is true, do Z", you can build it.
Rules run on the server, so they work overnight, at the weekend, and while every agent is logged out.
When to use one
When the trigger is a fact rather than a judgement, and you want the same thing to happen every time. Routing new conversations to a team. Labelling anything that mentions a word you care about. Raising the priority of a customer you have already described as an audience.
When not to use one
- When somebody has to read the conversation first. That is a macro.
- When you need to ask the customer something and branch on the answer. A rule runs its actions and finishes; it cannot wait. That is the flow builder — see Automation or flow builder?.
What you need first
An administrator account. Rules live under Settings → Automation. Commerce triggers also need a store connected under Commerce.
The real trigger events
A rule picks exactly one. There are twelve.
| Group | Events |
|---|---|
| Conversations | conversation created, conversation updated, conversation opened, conversation resolved, message created |
| Commerce | order created, order updated, order paid, order shipped, order delivered, order cancelled, order refunded |
A Commerce trigger fires when Lynomia Chat reads a change in a linked customer's orders, and acts on the contact's most recent conversation. If that contact has no conversation, nothing runs.
Which Commerce events ever fire depends on the platform: WooCommerce has no shipped or delivered status, and Shopify has no cancelled one. The recipe gallery says so next to each affected recipe.
What conditions and actions are available
Conditions cover the conversation (status, priority, inbox, assignee, team, labels), the message (its text, its type, whether it is a private note), the contact (email, phone, company, country, language), your custom attributes, whether the contact is in a shared audience, and what Commerce knows about them. On a Commerce trigger you can also test the order's store and store platform. Conditions join with and or or, and the form expects at least one.
Actions cover ownership (assign or unassign an agent or team), classification (add or remove a label, change priority), status (resolve, reopen, mark pending, snooze, mute), messages (send a message, add a private note, send an attachment, email a transcript, email a team) and send a webhook event.
A Commerce trigger deliberately offers neither send a message nor send an attachment: a store event is not a customer message, and the conversation may be outside the WhatsApp 24-hour window. Use a private note and a team instead.
Recipes
A recipe fills in a working rule and asks only for what it cannot know — which team, label, store, audience or amount. The eleven cover order routing, refund escalation, paid-order priority, cancelled-order follow-up, audience labelling and priority, spend-based routing, open-order routing, sending an order event to another system, and greeting every new conversation. The same gallery also offers a setup recipe that creates a shared audience and a rule that uses it, in one go.
A rule created from a recipe starts switched off. You read it, edit the wording, and turn it on yourself. A rule you build by hand is live the moment you save it. Either way it is then an ordinary rule.
A worked example
Refund questions must reach the returns team within seconds, at any hour.
- Settings → Automation → Create automation. Name it Refund to returns.
- Event: message created.
- Condition: content — contains — refund.
- Actions: add label
refund, assign team returns, priority high. - Save, send yourself a WhatsApp message containing the word, and check the conversation.
Who can do this
Administrators only — creating, editing, cloning, switching on and deleting. Automation is not one of the permissions a custom role can be granted, so a custom role cannot be given this page. See roles and permissions.
Limits
- No time-based conditions of any kind: no business hours, time of day or day of week.
- No priority escalation. A rule sets a priority once. Nothing raises it as a conversation ages.
- A rule's own actions do not trigger other rules. This prevents loops, and means rules cannot be chained.
- One event per rule. Two events means two rules, and both can match the same change.
- "Add label" labels the conversation, never the contact, and there is no trigger for a contact changing. See Labels or shared audiences?.
- A failed action is not reported. Each action is attempted in turn; the rest still run, silently.
- Commerce rules never wait, and each runs at most once per order change.
- Waiting rules are optional and off by default. A rule can act only if something is still true after 10 minutes to 30 days, but it must be enabled for your account, and on a conversation event it can test only status and inbox. Editing such a rule discards the waits already armed.
Related
If it does not work
Nothing happened. Check the switch first — a rule from a recipe is off until you turn it on. Then check that the conditions can be true at the moment the event fires. A condition on a label the rule itself adds later never matches.
It ran twice. Two rules on two events can both match one change.
A Commerce rule never fires. Either your platform does not report that status, or the contact has no conversation to act on.