continuing-cyan•17mo ago

Delay/ Schedule a message

Is there any way to do this? Am i missing something?

13 Replies

In Voiceflow, you can implement a delay or schedule a message using the "No Reply Response" feature. This feature is useful when the user gives no response at all, remaining silent or away from the keyboard. Under any "User Input" type step, there is an option to "Add No Reply Response" and designate a timeout period. To handle interactions within the Dialog Manager API, you can reference the no-reply trace. The responsibility of handling this is on your client calling the API. This would require a timer function of some kind that detects if the user has not responded within the timeout number of seconds. In which case, the next request is simply null to denote that the user has not replied, and the API will handle the following logic. Here is an example of how the no-reply trace looks like:

trace: [
  ...otherTraces,
  {
    type: "no-reply",
    payload: {
      timeout: 5
    }
  }
]

trace: [
  ...otherTraces,
  {
    type: "no-reply",
    payload: {
      timeout: 5
    }
  }
]

And here is an example of the API logic:

{
  action: {
    type: "no-reply" //  BaseRequest.RequestType.NOREPLY
  },
  // state, config, and other metadata here
}

{
  action: {
    type: "no-reply" //  BaseRequest.RequestType.NOREPLY
  },
  // state, config, and other metadata here
}

Please note that the timeout is in seconds. So if you want to delay a message for 5 minutes, you would set the timeout to 300 (5 minutes * 60 seconds/minute). For more details, you can refer to the No Reply Response documentation.

W. Williams (SFT)•17mo ago

What are you trying to do? Are you trying to see if the customer is still there?

continuing-cyanOP•17mo ago

No, im trying to send them a message 20 hours later to remind them to keep learning, i managed to do this on manychat and i just coundnt figure it out here eg. i had Day 1, day 2, Day 3, Day 4 etc. All 20 hours apart to keep interaction going across multiple days

conscious-sapphire•17mo ago

Are you connected to some social channel? Because it doesn’t make sense to do this if it’s through the voiceflow web chat :p

continuing-cyanOP•17mo ago

yeah its through whatsapp 🙂

conscious-sapphire•17mo ago

Ah ok, we looked into it for FlowBridge (social channel connections platform for Voiceflow) and the thing about WhatsApp is there is only 24-hour window for you to 'reply to a user' without additional costs. Once that window passes you run in to 2 things: 1. You have to pay to send a message 2. You can only send custom template messages which need to be pre-approved by Meta So as long as you have those 2 things in place, it can work but you would need to build a small custom server to initiate the messages overtime

continuing-cyanOP•17mo ago

Yeah, its why i limited it to 20 hours max, to always be within that window of time I just cant see a clear way of doing it here 🤔

conscious-sapphire•17mo ago

The problem is, you're still running in to the limitation on day 2. You send the first message 20 hours later, but thats still a message you initiated, not the user, so the clock will still be ticking, day 2 will not work unless the user actually replied to the message that you send on day 1 Again, there's way to get that working, but through custom templates + payment on Meta business plaform

continuing-cyanOP•17mo ago

The thing is - I already made this in ManyChat and it works without cost as long as it is in the 24 hour slot, the actual process is an automation every 12 hours within a certain time period eg between 10am-6pm. 🤷‍♀️ No problems on the meta side. Over 24 hours is understandable, but aiming for within. Users usually are replying up until day 30 so we somehow manage to string them along for a while 🫠 Just a bit tricky doing the MC to VF jump

conscious-sapphire•17mo ago

Aah ok, ye that makes complete sense then. Ye then this would definitely work. Though not natively supported, you can build a custom server that intercepts the communications and sends off a message to whatsapp after X many hours If you're using WhatsApp, i assume it's already running on a custom server so the only thing left is to add that custom functionality to it

continuing-cyanOP•17mo ago

Yeah 😅 its where im a little stuck, i really dont know how to do that

conscious-sapphire•17mo ago

Happy to help in private message 🙂

sunny-green•17mo ago

hye guys any follow-up about timeout features to delay messages sending ?

Delay/ Schedule a message

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