Trigger · Help

A trigger is the event that starts an automation. When someone writes "price", leaves a comment on your post, replies to your story or clicks your ad, it is the trigger that sets the flow in motion. An automation without a trigger never runs.

💡 Triggers live inside the flow's Start step; on the canvas it is the box labelled When…. A flow can hold up to 20 triggers, and all of them start the same flow.

What a trigger does

A trigger states three things at once:

Which event it is waiting for (a message, a comment, a story reply, a link, a time).
Which conditions the event must meet (a particular word, a particular post, a particular ad label).
Which channel it runs on. If your account has a single channel this choice does not matter; you can leave it on All channels.

A trigger is a filter, not a step: it sends nothing itself. The first step of the flow sends the message.

Trigger types

Started by a message

Keyword — Runs when the person writes one of the words you chose. A single trigger can hold up to 30 words.
Any message — Runs on every message that arrives while the person has no open session.
Default reply — Steps in when no other automation ran. It never goes to the same person more often than the frequency you set; it is one of the Basics flows, of which there is one per account.

Started by an Instagram interaction

Post comment — Runs on comments on posts, reels or live videos. You can pick one specific post or open it to all posts; you can give keywords, list words to exclude, and choose whether replies to comments also trigger it.
Story reply — Runs when someone replies to your story; you can narrow it with a keyword.
Story mention — Runs when someone tags your account in their own story.
Post share — Runs when someone shares a post or reel with you in DM.
Mention — Runs when someone tags you on somebody else's post or comment.

Started by a link or by time

Link / ad — Runs when a conversation begins from an ad, an ig.me / m.me short link or a QR code. If you give a link label (ref), only that campaign matches.
Date and time — Does not wait for anyone to write. It starts the flow at a given moment, relative to a date field on the contact card (24 hours before an appointment, for example), or on the same day every year (a birthday). You can also apply it only to people carrying a particular tag.

⚠️ With the Mention trigger, Meta does not provide the identity of the person who tagged you; only the post and comment IDs arrive. The flow therefore runs against the account rather than a person: no private DM can be sent and the reply is written under the comment. This is a restriction on Meta's side.

Explicit triggers and running sessions

Some triggers are explicit: even if the person has a session in progress, they interrupt it and start the new flow. The explicit triggers are: keyword, post comment, mention, story reply, story mention, post share, and link/ad.

The reasoning: if the person is arriving from somewhere new (they tapped a new comment, a new ad), it is right for them to enter the new flow rather than stay in the middle of the old conversation.

There are two exceptions:

If A new keyword can interrupt this automation is switched off in the automation's Settings tab and the session is awaiting a reply, the incoming text is given to that session.
If the person tapped a button we sent, the trigger is not consulted at all; the run continues from that button's branch.

Any message and Default reply are not explicit triggers; they run only when the person has no open session.

Keyword match modes

The keyword, post comment and story reply triggers each offer a Match setting:

Contains — The word appears anywhere in the text.
Whole word — The word appears as a separate word.
Starts with — The text begins with that word.
Exact match — The whole text is that word.

Matching always ignores case and accents: "ŞİFRE", "sifre" and "şifre" all count as the same. You therefore never need to add a word again in its different spellings.

Post comments additionally offer excluded words: if one of them appears in the comment, the flow does not start at all. Exclusion is always searched with "contains".

When several triggers match the same event

More than one automation's trigger can match the same event. In that case the narrower one wins. Narrowing is scored like this:

Naming a specific target is the heaviest narrowing: a specific post on a comment trigger, a specific ref value on a link trigger.
Match mode comes next: exact match > whole word > starts with > contains.
Narrowing the source gives a small advantage: post comments only, live only; ads only, short links only, QR codes only.

So a "every comment on this post" trigger beats an "all posts + keyword" trigger. When the scores tie, the order falls back to the trigger's creation date.

What exists on each channel

The trigger list is filtered by the account's channel. Post comment, Mention, Story reply, Story mention and Post share appear on Instagram accounts only; those concepts have no counterpart on WhatsApp and, even if selected, would never fire.

Choices already saved in a flow are not removed: if the account's channel changes, the old trigger stays where it is, the pre-publish check warns you, and you decide what to do.

Several triggers in one flow

A flow can hold up to 20 triggers, and every one of them starts the same flow. It is the cleanest way to serve the same job through several doors: the "price" keyword, comments on your pricing post and conversations from your pricing ad can all lead into one flow.

You can still tell those doors apart inside the flow: the Flow started by condition says which trigger the run came from. You can open with "Thanks for your comment" for someone arriving from a comment, and go straight into the offer for someone arriving from an ad.

A single flow may also carry triggers belonging to different channels; each trigger has its own Channel choice, and if your account has one channel that choice does not matter.

Common mistakes

Giving a single word "exact match". A customer writing "what is the price" will not match. In most cases Contains is the right choice.
Enabling replies on the comment trigger. With it on, a comment written under our own reply starts a new flow and cuts the conversation in progress. That is why it is off by default.
Treating the default reply as a welcome message. The default reply only steps in when no other automation ran.
Forgetting the window with a scheduled trigger. If the person has not written in the last 24 hours nothing can be sent: on WhatsApp you need a template, on Instagram you have to wait.
Putting the same word in two automations. If both match, only one runs, and the narrowing score decides which.

The right trigger makes the flow start on the right person at the right moment; the rest is the steps' job.