Now that we have some message templates created, it's time to configure the trigger that will send them.

Create a Trigger That Applies to Inquiries with a "Rule Violation" Status, and Send Your Prepared Templates

Since each trigger can only send one message template, you'll need to create a trigger for each type of reply you send. Above, we crafted replies for email, channel, and SMS, so we'll need to create three triggers to send each one.

First, we'll create a trigger to send the email message. Navigate to Settings > Messaging > Triggers > and click + Create Trigger to pull up the new trigger screen.

Here is a list of all the settings the trigger needs to have:

• Type: Immediate
• Event: Inquiry is received
• Add Condition > Inquiry Status: is One Of > Rule Violation
• Add Condition > Email Address on File: is One Of > Has Real Email Address
• Action: Email Templates > Send Rule Violation Answer to Guest

Now, let's talk about what the above settings mean!

The Type and Event fields will make the trigger run as soon as any new inquiry is received or recorded in your account. Remember that inquiries can be received or recorded in different ways.

Since we are targeting "rule violation" inquiries only, we want to add a "Condition" to the trigger that will stop it from sending out messages for other types of inquiries. Imagine getting an inquiry for bookable dates from a guest who met your policies, but your trigger accidentally sent out a "no, you have a rule violation" message. That would not be good! Adding the Inquiry Status condition will stop that.

Furthermore, since this trigger will send an email template, we add the "Email Address on File" condition and select the "Has real email address" value. This will ensure that only inquiries that include an email address from the guest will get this trigger.

There are other conditions you may want to add, but for now, this is enough to make our trigger send the email reply when inquiries come in that are both "rule violations" and have a real email address.

Finally, the last thing we select is the "Action" for the email template we want to send. Since this trigger is supposed to send an email reply, select the email template and be careful not to select the channel or SMS template.

At this point, your trigger should look like this:

Nice and simple!

Below the message template drop-down, you'll notice that there are other actions you can select called:

• Mark the inquiry answered
• Mark the inquiry read

These actions do exactly what they say. When the inquiry comes in and the trigger fires, the inquiry will be marked as read/answered in the main Inquiries dashboard if those options are selected. This will help you avoid seeing or dealing with them later, as the trigger already answered them for you. However, for now, we will leave them unchecked and discuss them below in this support article's "Variations" section.

That's it! Click Save, and now you have a trigger ready to go.

But we're not done. You created templates for channel and SMS replies, so you need to create triggers to send those.

Using the instructions above, create two more triggers with the same type, event, and conditions, but select the channel template and the SMS template as your "Actions" instead of email. In the Conditions section, make sure to remove the "Email Address on File" condition since channel and SMS replies don't care about the email address. There is no "Phone Number on File" condition, but that's okay because the trigger won't send an SMS reply if there's no phone number to send it to. The same is true for channel replies. If the inquiry did not come from a channel message platform (e.g., Airbnb, Booking.com messaging), then the trigger will silently skip sending the reply since there is no way to send it.

All done! You now have active triggers in place that will automatically send email replies to any inquiry with "rule violation" requests.

Variations

You may have wondered about a few things as we walked through the template and trigger configuration above.

For instance, what if the guest sent in a "rule violation" request but also included a comment where they asked for an exception? Or what if their comment clarifies the request in a way where you would allow it? Sending a "not allowed" message without acknowledging their comment might sound cold and unprofessional.

Or, what if it's daytime and you have time to respond versus nighttime when you can't? How does that change what you want to send?

All of these scenarios can be dealt with by creating different types of triggers with additional (or different) conditions. Here are a few variations.

If They Included a Comment and It's Daytime

Let's start with the scenario where a "rule violation" inquiry comes in, but it also has a comment from the guest, and it's in the middle of the daytime. In this scenario, some PMs don't want to fire off an auto-reply because they want to read the comment first and then reply manually. Because it's daytime, they know they will have time to read it and respond quickly.

To make this change, adjust the trigger we just created (above) and add some additional settings:

• Add Condition > Contains a Comment: No
• Add Condition > Received after: "8:00 AM"
• Add Condition > Received before: "8:00 PM"
• Action > Mark as Answered: Yes
• Action > Mark as Read: Yes

This will limit the trigger to only apply to inquiries that arrive between 8 am and 8 pm (day time) and don't have a comment. You can, of course, adjust the received times to whatever hours you want, based on your own schedule.

If They Included a Comment and It's Nighttime

But doing a daytime-only trigger means that nighttime inquiries won't be answered at all, so now you need to handle inquiries that come in overnight.

Create a duplicate trigger using the same settings as above but change the conditions to target nighttime:

• Add Condition > Contains a Comment
• Add Condition > Received after: "8:00 PM"
• Add Condition > Received before: "8:00 AM"
• Action > Mark as Answered
• Action > Mark as Read

Notice that the AM and PM times are flipped around so that you are now targeting inquiries coming in after 8 PM and before 8 AM (or however you change the hours to match your own schedule). Notice that we removed the "contains a comment" condition because we don't care if it has a comment at nighttime - we just want to answer it quickly. We removed the mark as read/answered because we want the inquiry to remain unanswered so that you remember to look at it again in the morning.

You could further refine this to use a slightly different template body that has "An auto-responder sent this. We will answer your question or comment in the morning." to the body of the reply, and use this different reply if the inquiry comes in during nighttime and has a comment. This would give the guest a fast response overnight while also addressing the comment.

Sending Too Much Information; How to Limit

There may be situations where you send multiple triggers simultaneously for the same inquiry. It's rare, but it can happen.

The most common scenario is when a direct inquiry comes from your personal website, and the guest includes both their email address and phone number. If you have a trigger set up with an email reply and a second trigger set up with an SMS reply, the guest will get hit with both messages simultaneously - once in their email inbox and again on their phone from the SMS message. Maybe this is what you want, but be careful in crafting messages to accommodate these scenarios. One way of limiting this is to have 2 versions of the SMS trigger - one that handles when there is an email address and one that handles when there isn't.

The first trigger that handles the situation where there's an email address should use a short message that speaks to the email like this:

SMS Template > Body:

Hi {CFIRST}, I just sent you an email about your inquiry. Let me know if you don't get it, and thanks for reaching out about {PNAME}! ☕

And on the trigger settings:

Add Condition > Email Address on File: Has real email address

The second trigger that handles the situation where no email address was included should assume that the SMS message is the only thing going to the guest and use a message like this:

SMS Template > Body:

Hi {CFIRST}, thanks for reaching out about {PNAME}. However, there's a problem with your request. Are you available to discuss? ☕

And on the trigger settings:

Add Condition > Email Address on File: Doesn't have real email address

Adding the "Email Address on File" condition on the trigger will ensure that each SMS trigger only goes out once and that they are mutually exclusive.