Recipe — Send a confirmation email on inbound email
Atender doesn’t send case-received confirmation emails by default — this is intentional, because not every team wants to acknowledge every inbound message. If you do, an automation is how you opt in.
This recipe builds a rule that sends an Email Studio template back to the caller in the language the customer writes in, falling back to the inbox’s language and then English.
What this rule does
- Trigger: A new inbound email lands in any of your inboxes.
- Action: Atender renders the Case Received Email Studio template in the customer’s language (the inbox’s language when the conversation has no customer language, then English) and sends it as a reply on the same conversation.
- Loop guard: Confirmations are sent for normal customer-created email conversations. Auto-submitted messages, mailing list or bulk messages, and auto-replies are skipped automatically by Atender’s built-in loop guard.
Build it
1. Create the template
If you don’t already have one, create the Case Received template in Email Studio with translations for every language your team operates in. The template typically includes:
- Acknowledgment of receipt
- The conversation’s human-readable ID (
{{conversation.id}}) - Expected response time
- A note that they can reply to the same email to add details
2. Create the automation
Go to Settings → Automation rules, click Add rule, then Build it by hand instead.
- When — A new conversation starts
- Only if — Channel is Email
- Then — Send email template → Case Received, language Match the customer
3. Limit how often it runs (optional but recommended)
Atender’s built-in loop guard skips auto-submitted messages, list or bulk messages, and auto-replies before they can trigger confirmation loops. You can still turn on Limit how often it runs in More options — 1 every 1440 minutes, Per customer — if you want to avoid sending repeated confirmations to the same person across multiple new cases in a short period.
4. Test before you turn it on
Click Test on recent conversations to replay the rule on the last 7 days. Confirm the matches look right — normal customer-created email conversations should match, while agent replies, outbound communication, auto-submitted messages, list or bulk messages, and auto-replies should not. If the match list looks wrong, make sure the trigger is A new conversation starts (not A customer sends a message, which also runs on later customer replies).
5. Turn it on
Click Create rule, then turn on Run this rule. The next inbound email will receive a confirmation within seconds of arrival. If your workspace is on a trial, confirmation emails count toward the trial’s daily outbound email cap, so a correctly configured rule may stop sending after the cap is reached until the next UTC day.
Verify it worked
Send a test email from a normal customer email address to one of your support inboxes. Within a few seconds, you should receive a reply with the confirmation template’s content, rendered in the language you sent in.
Open Run History and find the run created by your test email. The run row should show the rule name, the A new conversation starts trigger, an action chip for sending the Email Studio template, and a success or failed status. When available, it should also include a link to the conversation created by the test email.
If you test with an auto-reply, mailing list, bulk message, or another message with auto-submitted headers, Atender should skip the confirmation automatically.
Variants
- Don’t confirm company-specific senders. Atender automatically handles RFC 3834 auto-response headers, so you do not need to filter common auto-reply headers yourself to avoid loops. Sender and domain filters are still useful for exclusions specific to your company, such as
contact.email not contains "@yourcompany.com". - Confirm only outside opening hours. Turn on Only during opening hours and choose Outside opening hours. Pair with a separate in-hours rule that does in-line routing instead.
- Different templates by inbox. Use branches: Only if Email inbox is support@… → Send Support Confirmation; Otherwise, if Email inbox is sales@… → Send Sales Confirmation; Otherwise → Send Generic Confirmation.
Troubleshooting
-
Symptom: Confirmation goes out in English even though the customer wrote in another language. Fix:
Match the customeruses the customer’s language first, then the channel’s inbox language, then English. Check which of those applies, and that the template has a translation for that language. When the matching translation is missing, the template’s default language is sent, then English. -
Symptom: Customer keeps getting confirmation emails on every reply. Fix: The trigger is A customer sends a message, not A new conversation starts. Change the trigger.