Creating an Auto-Response

Auto-Responses are used to pair a keyword set with a pre-written message that appears instantly in response to a post or comment that uses any keyword from the set.

Trigger

1. Select the trigger "Keyword Mention in Community" and add one or more very specific keywords that will trigger your Auto-Response. The sequence uses string-matching to determine if the words or phrases you list here appear in a users' post or comment.

Exclude Channels: This is an optional setting you can use if there are channels where it doesn't make sense for an Auto-Response to display. This could include a channel where the message wouldn't be applicable, or a channel that is populated by a feed and the posts' author is not your intended audience.

Action

2. Select the action "Display an Auto-Response" and provide a title (which will appear in bold) and a short message.

Linked Content: This is an optional field. If you provide a link, the entire Auto-Response card becomes clickable, opening a Form or Resource, or loading a page from an external site.

Testing

3. Test it out. Once you have provided at least a title for your Action, click Publish. This will take you back to the list of sequences. Before you activate your sequence, you might first go to the Community tab > "Search Posts." From here you can search the keywords you just added to your Auto-Response sequence and gauge whether the response you drafted would make sense if it were to appear there.

Activate

4. Ready to activate: Once you're satisfied with your keyword/response pairing, you can start triggering Auto-Responses by clicking the 3-dot menu next to your sequence name, and selecting Activate.

Data Insights

5. Evaluate your Auto-Response: See how data insights help you assess how users are engaging with your content.

Best Practices

We recommend creating keyword sets with a narrow focus, and writing messages that are clearly tied to those keywords. The logic will match on the exact string (including spaces), but there is still a risk of generating irrelevant, illogical matches if your keywords cast too wide of a net.

Instead of:

Keyword Set (Trigger): [Sad] [mad] [angry] [stress]
Auto-Response (Action): "It sounds like you are having an emotional time and might benefit from talking to someone in our counseling office. Make an appointment today!! >"

Try:

Keyword Set (Trigger): [depressed] [stressed out]
Auto-Response (Action): If you're feeling depressed or stressed out, you can always talk to someone in our counseling office at no charge. Learn how to make an appointment. >

Notes about Keyword Matches:

The logic matches on the exact string of the keyword/phrase (including spaces). If the keyword appears within a longer word, it will not result in an Auto-Response appearing on that post.

A post or comment can match on only a single Auto-Response. For this reason, you are limited to a single Action for this Trigger type.

Additionally, if another activated sequence includes the same keyword, the sequence that was created first will be the only one triggered.

Auto-Responses are triggered by posts and comments made by users in both the mobile app and Campus Cloud. They do not trigger when the post or comment is made by a host (e.g. a Service or Organization) since those using Community in an administrative capacity are not the intended audience.