Sending the customer a message is half the job; the other half is keeping the record straight. Tagging the person, writing down their city, assigning the chat to the right agent and telling your team about it is the step's work. This guide walks you through building the step, ordering the actions correctly and knowing which action ends the flow.
Action
💡 The full list of action kinds is in Action. This guide covers building the step and the ordering; each kind has its own article.
In this article you will find:
Adding an action step
Adding, changing and removing actions
Why the order matters
How Hand over to a person ends the flow
The step's single output
The same actions in global rules
Limits and known issues
Common mistakes
Adding an action step
Open the automation and stay on the Flow tab.
Open the Add step menu and choose Action. A box appears on the canvas with the note "Changes tags, fields, assignment or status."
Tap the box; the settings panel opens on the side.
In Connections, attach the step's Then output to the next step.
To add the step already connected, use the Add and connect a step menu in the previous step's Connections section.
Adding, changing and removing actions
In the settings panel, press Add action. The panel adds an Add tag action by default.
Pick the kind in the dropdown: Add tag, Remove tag, Write to field, Clear field, Increase/decrease field, Assign conversation, Conversation status, Hand over to a person, Notify the team, Add to a sequence, Remove from a sequence, Hide comment or Delete comment.
Fill in whatever the kind asks for (tag name, field, value, team member, sequence, notification text).
To delete an action, tap the cross button at the end of its row.
The kind list is filtered by the account's channel: on a WhatsApp-only account, Hide comment and Delete comment are not listed, because WhatsApp has no comments.
Changing an action's kind resets the row and the new kind arrives with empty boxes; the value you typed is not kept.
Why the order matters
The actions in a step run in the order they are written, and each one sees the result of the ones before it. That is why the ordering should not be arbitrary.
Write first, then use. If you write a value into a field and use that value in the same step, the write must come first.
Remove the old status tag first. If the person moves from waiting to called, put Remove tag first and Add tag second. The reverse also works, but it reads worse in the logs.
Assign before notifying. If you use Assign conversation and Notify the team together, assign first; let the notification reach a team that knows whose chat it is.
Keep Hand over to a person last. The reason is in the next section.
A typical arrangement looks like this in one step:
Add tag: interested
Write to field: source = october-campaign
Assign conversation: sales agent
Notify the team: "A new hot lead has arrived."
All four sit in the same box and run in order. Splitting the same work across four steps only stretches the canvas and the logs.
How Hand over to a person ends the flow
The Hand over to a person action ends the flow's session: the steps attached to the Then output do not run, the conversation opens and the team takes over.
There is a distinction here that is often missed: actions written after the handover in the same step still run. Every action in the step is applied; what ends is not the step but the continuation of the flow. Even so, putting the handover last is recommended, because whoever reads the flow answers "what happens after this step" from the last line in the box.
When you use the handover you can also say which agent the person goes to; the details are in Conversation and team actions.
⚠️ Note: Because Hand over to a person ends the flow, any message you want to send has to be in a step before the handover. No message step after it is ever reached.
The step's single output
A condition has two branches; an action step has a single output: Then. Actions do not decide anything, they only apply.
If you leave the output unconnected, the flow ends after the actions are applied. Sometimes that is what you want — the last job of a flow may well be tagging the person. Adding a Note step next to an output you left empty on purpose makes life easier for whoever opens the flow months later.
The same actions in global rules
The same list of actions is used in global rules, which run outside the flow: under Automations › Rules you define rules like "when this tag is added, do this" and add the same actions to the What happens list.
There are two differences:
Hide comment and Delete comment are never listed on the rules screen. A rule has no comment context; there is no comment to moderate.
Hand over to a person only opens the conversation in a rule. There is no flow session to pause.
An action step cannot be empty: the pre-publish check raises "Add an action".
An incompletely filled action is an error too ("An action is incomplete"): an empty tag name, an invalid field key, an empty notification text and an unselected sequence all count.
A placeholder is only filled in the value box of the Write to field action. A placeholder written into a tag name is added literally as the tag.
Every action kind is a separate plan feature. Add to a sequence and Remove from a sequence share one plan key. If your plan does not cover it, the session stops at the step and a "Plan lock" line is written to the log.
In the session log an action step writes a single Action line listing the kinds it applied. Comment actions write their own lines in addition.
Common mistakes
Putting the handover in the middle. Steps after it are never reached; move your messages earlier.
Expecting an action step to decide something. An action step has one output. Branching needs a Condition step.
Forgetting to remove the old tag. The person carries two states at once and your filters go wrong.
Writing a placeholder into a tag name. That text becomes the tag verbatim.
Mistaking "Notify the team" for a message to the customer. The notification is only visible to your team in the panel.
Trying to publish with an empty step. Publishing is blocked.
If an action does not work as you expect, see My action isn't working or contact our Support team.