Automations

Automations handle the parts of a conversation that don't need a person: the after-hours acknowledgement, the "what are your opening hours" that arrives forty times a week, tagging an enquiry so the right team sees it.

Set them up in Settings → Automations.

What they can do

An automation watches incoming messages and, when its conditions match, takes an action — sending a reply, applying a label, assigning the conversation, or creating a record.

Conditions can look at the message content, the time of day, and whether it's the first message from someone new.

After-hours replies

The most useful automation most teams run. A message arriving outside working hours gets an immediate acknowledgement telling the customer when you'll be back.

This is windowed deliberately: a burst of messages after hours produces one notice, not one per message. Nothing makes a business look more automated than three identical out-of-office replies in a row.

Images

An automation can read text out of an incoming image, so a rule can match on what a screenshot or a photographed document actually says.

AI replies

On plans that include it, Tenashi can draft or send answers from your knowledge base. See Knowledge base and AI replies.

Restraint is the point

Two guidelines worth taking seriously:

Automate acknowledgement, not conversation. "Thanks — we've got this and we'll reply by 9am" earns goodwill. A bot attempting a sales conversation loses it.

Every automated message is still a message from your number. WhatsApp's spam protections don't distinguish between a human sending and a rule sending. A misconfigured automation replying to everything is a genuine risk to your number — see Keeping your number safe.