Send a message from a workflow
The customer-facing step. Powerful, metered, and the one most likely to embarrass you if the condition is loose.
This is the only step a customer sees, which makes it both the most valuable and the most dangerous. Three constraints govern it and all three catch people out.
WhatsApp's 24-hour window means a free-form message fails silently for anyone who has not messaged you recently. Broadcast timings on the channel hold automated sends outside your permitted hours. And AI messages are metered, unlike messages your team types.
Steps
Add a send-message step and choose the channel
Then write the message.
Check which channel you have chosen before you write, because the constraints differ sharply. WhatsApp outside the 24-hour window needs an approved template; email tolerates length that would be unreadable on WhatsApp.
Respect the WhatsApp window
Outside 24 hours you need an approved template; inside it you can send free-form. A workflow that assumes free-form will work in testing — because you have just been messaging yourself — and fail for real customers who have gone quiet.
Check the broadcast timings on the channel
Automated WhatsApp is held outside the hours set there. A 2am automated message is a setting, not an accident.
Write it as a person would
"Sorry we missed your call — we open at 9 and will ring you back first thing" beats a formal acknowledgement nobody reads. Automated does not have to mean stilted.
Make sure a reply goes somewhere
People reply to automated messages. If the channel is not pointed at a bot and nobody is watching the queue, you have manufactured silence — which is worse than not messaging at all.
Test it on yourself, from outside the window
Trigger the workflow against your own number after not messaging for a day. That is the real test, and it is the one that catches the template problem.
Check it worked
Send it to yourself and read it on a phone, not on a laptop. Automated messages almost always read longer and more formal on a small screen than they did in the box you wrote them in.
The parts people get wrong
- A message sent by a workflow on WhatsApp is attributed to the channel message user. Keep that account active.
- AI messages are metered against your plan allowance; messages your team types are not. Automated messages count.
- A loose condition on a message step is the fastest way to send something to the wrong few hundred people.