Recipe — Auto-tag conversations by message content

When an inbound message contains specific keywords, apply a tag automatically. The simplest pattern is a Returns tag for any message mentioning “refund” or “return.”

Auto-tagging is a foundation for downstream rules — once conversations are tagged consistently, you can route, escalate, and report on them.

What this rule does

• Trigger: A new inbound message arrives.
• Condition: Message body contains one of a list of keywords.
• Action: Add the corresponding tag.

Before you start

• The destination tag exists in Tag Management

Build it

• 1 — Trigger — Message received
• 2 — Condition — message.direction equals inbound
• 3 — Condition (AND) — message.body contains refund OR message.body contains return (use a nested OR group)
• 4 — Branch — Always
• 5 — Action — Add tag → Returns

The nested OR is important: a single condition can only check one substring, so you build the OR inside an AND-with-direction group.

Why the inbound check matters

Without message.direction equals inbound, the rule would also fire on agent replies that contain “refund” — including the reply where the agent writes “Sure, we’ll process your refund.” That would re-tag a conversation that’s already been tagged, log a duplicate execution, and clutter reporting.

Variants

Multiple tags from multiple keyword groups

One rule per tag is the cleanest pattern, but if you want to keep them together, use branches:

• 1 — body contains refund OR body contains return — Add tag Returns
• 2 — body contains shipping OR body contains delivery — Add tag Shipping
• 3 — body contains password OR body contains login — Add tag Auth

Branches evaluate top to bottom, and only the first matching If runs. To stamp every matching tag (not just the first), use Always branches instead.

Language-aware keywords

Keywords differ across languages. For multi-language teams, you have two options:

1. One rule per language, gated on the conversation’s detected language.
2. One rule with all keywords combined in one big OR group: body contains refund OR body contains rückgabe OR body contains remboursement OR .... Simpler but less precise.

Negative tags

A condition like body contains "thank you" AND body not contains "but" lets you tag genuine positive feedback without sweeping in hedged complaints.

Verify it worked

Send a test inbound email that contains the keyword. Within a few seconds, the destination tag should be applied to the conversation. Send a second test reply as the agent with the same keyword — the rule should not re-fire (because of the inbound condition).

Troubleshooting

• Symptom: Rule fires on every message, even those without the keyword. Fix: The OR group’s brackets are wrong, or an extra condition is missing. Re-check the condition tree.

• Symptom: Rule re-tags the same conversation repeatedly. Fix: Add a condition tags not contains <destination tag> so the rule skips already-tagged conversations. Or rely on the destination tag being idempotent — Add tag does not duplicate an existing tag.

• Symptom: False positives (“preform” matches because of “form”). Fix: Use word-boundary-aware keywords if available, or pick more specific phrases. Atender’s contains is substring-match; it doesn’t recognize word boundaries.

See also

• Conditions and operators reference
• Tag Management