Setting up from start to finish
The whole setup, from creating your account to your first automatic reply — portfolio, connecting a channel, your first flow and your first test.
Last updated: September 30, 2026
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The whole setup, from creating your account to your first automatic reply — portfolio, connecting a channel, your first flow and your first test.
Last updated: September 30, 2026
The first time you open the panel you face an empty screen, and it is hard to know where to begin. Setup is really five steps and takes under half an hour. This guide walks all of them without skipping a single click; by the end, a real automatic reply will have gone out to a real customer.
In this article you will find:
⚠️ Your Instagram account must be a business or creator account. A personal account cannot be connected. You can change the type in the Instagram app under Settings › Account type and tools; the change takes a few minutes.
Have these at hand:
Meta's permission screens appear during setup. The panel needs the requested permissions to read and answer your messages; if you decline one, the connection stays half-finished and you start over.
If you came in through Facebook or Google there is no verification step; instead a One last step consent screen appears on your first sign-in. The details are in the signing up and signing in guide.
💡 We suggest turning on two-step verification right here rather than at the very end: this account is about to gain access to your Instagram account. It takes a minute from My user settings › Security.
If you have no portfolio yet, signing in takes you straight to the Connect your account setup screen. Two things happen there: your first portfolio is created automatically and you are invited to connect an account.
Your first portfolio is created with the name My portfolio in your language. You can rename it any time from Portfolio settings › General.
If you run several brands or want to keep teams apart, use the New portfolio link at the bottom of the account switcher. On the screen that opens:
If your plan's portfolio limit is full, a limit warning and an Upgrade plan button appear instead of the form.
The portfolio's Connect account screen shows the connection paths as cards. Your account allowance is written at the top, for example Accounts 1/3.
Which cards appear depends on platform settings; a channel that is off is not drawn at all.
⚠️ Note: The selection screen is valid for 15 minutes. When it expires it says "The selection expired or is invalid"; press Connect again and start over. The selection is all-or-nothing: every account you tick must fit in the portfolio's free slots.
After connecting, the account's settings show the number's quality rating, daily new-conversation tier and display name approval. Meta supplies these values; the panel only reads them.
Once the connection is made, the account's Settings › Connection screen becomes available. Two things there are worth setting up:
The same screen carries your account's chat link and QR code. Give the link a tag (for example poster-summer) and only the automation waiting for that tag runs, so you can tell apart the people arriving from a poster, an ad or your shop window.
The moment your account is connected, messages start flowing into the inbox. Now let us build the first automatic reply. The easiest start is answering DMs that contain the word "price".
price into Keywords and press Enter. You can add several words separated by commas.Each channel has its own limits and the panel checks them before publishing:
These are restrictions on Meta's side. Exceed one and the Pre-publish check raises an error and publishing stops.
Insert placeholder drops values such as the person's name into the text. Remember to give a fallback for a value that might be empty: a message reading "Hello ," to someone whose name is unknown looks bad. The counter under the text box shows how many characters you have written.
When you press Publish, the panel first runs the Pre-publish check. If there is an error, publishing stops and the reason is written out: "Add at least one trigger", "Message text is empty", "Connect the start to a step" and so on. Warnings do not block publishing, but they are worth reading.
Changes you make after publishing appear in the list as Unpublished changes; they do not go live until you press Publish again. That lets you edit a flow without worrying.
The editor's Settings tab holds the automation's behaviour:
The Simulator on the editor's Test tab runs the flow without sending anything to a real channel. Type into the box at the bottom as if you were the contact, press Send, and watch the steps run. On the right, the Test contact panel shows how tags and fields change. Reset starts over.
The simulator is a sandbox only: contact details do not really change and nothing enters your statistics.
The Try on the real channel section of the same tab sends the draft to a real contact you pick. The person must have written to you within the last 24 hours; only those appear in the list. The session is marked as a test and is excluded from statistics.
The most honest test, though, is from your own phone: message your Instagram account from another account with the word "price" and watch the reply arrive.
When something does not go the way you expected, open the automation's Logs tab. It records line by line which steps each session passed through, which branch each condition took, and why a message was not sent.
If more than one person will work the inbox, send invitations from Portfolio settings › Team. You choose the role when inviting:
The invited person joins by clicking the link in their email; how that goes is covered in the joining a team article.
Creating and connecting an account takes about 10 minutes, and building the first automation another 10-15. The longest part is writing the message texts, so prepare those in advance.
Yes. Each becomes its own account, and both can sit in the same portfolio. You move between them with the account switcher at the top left. Automations live inside an account, so if you want the same flow on both, you build it twice.
No. When a connection breaks, messages stop arriving and automations stop running, but your contacts, past conversations and flows stay. Reconnect with the same account and everything is where you left it.
No. An account exists only once an Instagram account or a WhatsApp number is connected. A portfolio, on the other hand, can be created empty.
A flow holds at most 200 steps and 400 connections. In practice you will never get close; when a flow grows complicated, splitting it in two with the Another flow step reads far better.
No. You can exchange messages freely for 24 hours from the moment the person wrote to you. Once the window closes, nothing goes out on Instagram, and on WhatsApp only an approved template does. This is a restriction on Meta's side.
Yes. Your changes stay in the draft and show in the list as Unpublished changes; they do not go live until you press Publish again. To go back to an earlier version, use the Versions tab in the editor.
When several automations match one event, only one runs: the narrower one wins. A trigger naming a specific post or ad beats an "all posts" trigger, and an exact keyword match beats "contains". The detail is in the how the system works article.
The Continue setup card on the account's home page lists the remaining steps with a shortcut next to each. If you dismissed the card, the Show setup link brings it back.
If you hit trouble during setup, read the "I can't sign in" guide or contact our support team.
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