Automations

Automations are flows that run automatically, one contact at a time. Something happens — a new contact is created, someone sends a keyword, a tag is added — and Nybero walks that contact through a sequence you designed: messages, waits, branches, tags, forms, appointment booking, even a handover to your AI agent. You build the sequence once in the visual editor; from then on it runs for every matching contact, day and night.

Automations vs. campaigns

Both send WhatsApp messages, but they solve different problems:

	Campaign	Automation
Who receives it	A whole audience at once	One contact at a time, whenever they qualify
When it sends	Now or at a scheduled time	Whenever the trigger fires — today, tomorrow, in a month
Content	One approved template	A multi-step flow: messages, waits, branches, forms, tags …
Typical use	Newsletter, promotion, announcement	Welcome sequence, keyword reply, webinar reminders, lead qualification

Rule of thumb: if you want to reach everyone now, use a campaign. If you want something to happen automatically whenever a contact does X, build an automation.

The Automations page

Open Automations in the sidebar. At the top you’ll find three ways to create one:

• ✨ Generate an automation in seconds — describe what you want in plain language and the AI builds a draft for you. See AI generator.
• ✨ Start from template — a gallery of ready-made funnels (greeting, qualification, booking) you can adapt.
• + From scratch — an empty automation that opens straight in the editor.

Below that, Your automations lists everything you’ve built. Each row shows:

• Status — a green dot and Active, or a grey dot and Inactive. Only active automations enrol contacts. Use the toggle switch in the row to activate or deactivate at any time — deactivating stops new enrolments without deleting anything.
• Automation — the name (click it to open the editor), plus a priority badge for anything that isn’t Normal (⏰ Time-critical, High, Low).
• Trigger — what starts it (e.g. Keyword inbound, Contact created).
• Steps and Created.
• Row actions: the on/off toggle, Edit, a chevron that expands the details, and delete.

Expanding a row shows its Runs — how many contacts are currently running or waiting, and how many finished as done, were stopped, or failed — plus a compact list of the steps. You can also filter the list by all / active / inactive and search by name.

Caution

Deleting an automation also deletes its runs — contacts currently mid-flow are dropped. If you just want to pause, use the toggle instead.

The visual editor

Clicking an automation opens the editor: a zoomable canvas showing your flow as connected cards, top to bottom.

• Trigger row — at the very top. Click the trigger card to change what starts the automation (Start this automation when…). You can add several triggers side by side; any one of them enrols the contact. See Triggers.
• Step cards — each card is one step. Click a card to edit its settings in the side drawer; click a + between cards to insert a new step. Steps are grouped in the picker: Messaging, Timing, Logic, Contact, Appointments, ActiveCampaign, AI Agent, Finish. See Steps.
• Branches — a Condition card splits the flow into a yes and a no path, each with its own steps.
• Top bar — switch between Active / Inactive, set the Priority, see how many contacts are live in flow, and Save.

While an automation is active, the editor shows live numbers: how many contacts are currently at each step. That makes it easy to see where people get stuck or drop off.

How a run proceeds

When a trigger fires for a contact, Nybero starts a run for them: their personal walk through your flow, beginning at the first step.

• Each contact enters a given automation once. Sending the trigger keyword twice doesn’t restart the flow, and a contact who is still mid-flow is never enrolled again.
• If you edit the steps and save, that’s a new version of the automation. Contacts already mid-flow finish on the version they started with; contacts who finished earlier can go through your new version again when the trigger fires.
• A run moves from step to step instantly, and pauses at Wait steps (or when a step is waiting for the contact to do something). When the wait is over, it continues exactly where it left off.
• A run ends at an Automation ends or Stop automation step. It also stops automatically if the contact opts out.
• You can take a single contact out of a running automation at any time: open the contact, find the automation in their journey, and click Remove from automation.

One conversation at a time

A contact should never be talked at by three automations simultaneously. Nybero enforces this for you:

• One open dialog per contact. When an automation asks the contact something and waits for the answer (a question with buttons, a form, an appointment picker), it owns the conversation. Other automations politely queue until that dialog is finished.
• The reply goes to the right flow. Whatever the contact answers is routed to the automation that currently owns the dialog — never to a different one.
• Priority decides who goes first. In the editor’s top bar you set a priority: ⏰ Time-critical (always send), High, Normal or Low. If a higher-priority automation starts a dialog while a lower one owns it, the higher one takes over; the interrupted flow re-asks its question later.
• Time-critical always sends. An automation set to ⏰ Time-critical (use this for event reminders like “we start in 15 minutes”) skips the queue entirely — nothing may delay it.
• The AI agent steps aside for flows. If your AI agent is chatting with a contact and an automation sends a form or starts a structured dialog, the agent yields and lets the flow finish first.
• Even simple one-off messages from different automations are spaced a few seconds apart, so the contact never gets a burst of messages at once.

You don’t have to configure any of this — just set a sensible priority per automation and Nybero handles the traffic.

The 24-hour window

WhatsApp only allows free-form messages while the 24-hour customer service window is open — that is, within 24 hours of the contact’s last message to you. Outside the window, a step must send an approved template instead.

Practical consequence: right after a keyword trigger the window is always open (the contact just wrote to you), so Send message works fine. But after a Wait of a day or more, the window has usually closed — use Send WhatsApp template there. Details and patterns in Steps.

Testing an automation

Before pointing an automation at real contacts:

1. Build the flow while the automation is Inactive and Save. Nothing runs yet.
2. Read every path once, top to bottom. Check especially: does any message come after a long wait? Then it must be a template (see above).
3. Switch to Active in the top bar and Save.
4. Trigger it yourself: send the keyword from your own phone, submit the test form, or add the trigger tag to your own contact record.
5. Watch the editor — the in flow counter and the live per-step numbers show exactly where your test contact is. On the Automations page, expand the row to see your run’s state.
6. Done testing? Open your own contact and click Remove from automation, or just let the run finish. Remember: the same contact won’t re-enter the same version, so for a second test either use another number or edit-and-save (which creates a new version).

Tip

Keep a “test contact” — your own WhatsApp number — in the CRM. It’s the fastest way to experience every automation exactly as your customers will.

Next steps

• Triggers — everything that can start an automation.
• Steps — every building block, in detail.
• AI generator — describe it, review it, activate it.
• Recipes — complete, copy-ready flows (webinar funnel, welcome sequence, keyword replies …).