Create your first automation

Walk through building a complete automation from scratch in the manual builder. By the end you’ll have a working rule that auto-tags any inbound email containing the word “refund.”

Before you start

• Admin permissions to edit automation rules
• A read of What are Automations? helps but isn’t required

Steps

1. Open the rules page. Go to Settings → Automation Rules. The page opens on the Manual Builder tab.

2. Start a new rule. Click New rule in the top-right. The builder opens with an empty rule and the trigger panel selected.

3. Pick a trigger. Choose Message received from the trigger list. This fires every time a new inbound message arrives — which is what we want for content matching.

4. Add conditions. In the conditions panel, add one condition:

   
   Field: message.body
   Operator: contains
   Value: refund Then add a second condition joined with AND:
   Field: message.direction
   Operator: equals
   Value: inbound

5. Add a branch. The builder starts with an Always branch. Leave it as Always — we want to tag every message that passed the conditions above.

6. Drop in an action. Inside the Always branch, click Add action → Add tag. Pick the tag Returns (create it in Tag Management first if it doesn’t exist).

7. Name and save. Give the rule a descriptive name like “Auto-tag: Returns”. Click Save.

8. Enable it. Toggle the rule On at the top of the editor. The rule is now live.

Verify it worked

Send a test email to one of your inboxes containing the word “refund” in the body. Open the conversation that arrives — within a few seconds the Returns tag should be applied.

If you don’t see the tag after 30 seconds, check the Manual Executions tab on the rules page and filter for your rule’s name. Each fire is logged with the trigger, branch, action results, and any errors.

Troubleshooting

• Symptom: Rule didn’t fire at all. Fix: Confirm the rule is enabled. Confirm the trigger is Message received, not Conversation created (the latter fires only on the very first message).

• Symptom: Rule fired but the tag wasn’t applied. Fix: Open Manual Executions, find the failed run, and read the action error. The most common cause is the tag being deleted or renamed since you wired up the rule.

• Symptom: The condition matches but the rule fires on outbound messages too. Fix: Make sure the second condition (message.direction equals inbound) is set — without it, agent replies containing “refund” would also trigger the tag.

See also

• Simulate a rule before enabling
• Use the AI Builder to generate a rule
• Trigger types reference