Filtering instant broadcast recipients

(Sam Ward) #1

I’m trying to filter a broadcast down to just a handful of users. These are pulling from existing users, so I can’t set a new attribute for them.

Can I just add something like this as a filter:

{{instant_broadcast.response_path}} = [response path/c/number]
or
{{instant_broadcast.response_path}} = [response path/c/number]
or
{{instant_broadcast.response_path}} = [response path/c/number]
etc.

Would that work?

Or is there a way I can just poll through a spreadsheet that I import in a separate flow?

Thanks,
Sam

(Karen Barker) #2

Hi Sam,

As long as you know the response path of the users you want to send the broadcast to then there wouldn’t be any issues adding a filter in the format you’ve mentioned above. :slight_smile:

1 Like
(Sam Ward) #3

Hm. I’m trying this as a test, filtering just my own number, but the Broadcast doesn’t look like it is triggering.

Here’s how I have my filter set up:

Screen Shot 2018-02-13 at 10.31.14 AM.png838×314 13.9 KB

Note, my broadcast is a new bot, and the bot id above is from another bot that my number has interacted with.

However, bot 58a77ecef1f135000c0ed6e7 is not connected to this Broadcast flow. Could that be the issue?

Thanks,
Sam

(Daniel Beckett) #4

Hi @sam_ward

Response paths are unique and generated between the user and the bot. This means that for every bot you talk with the response path will be different. Unfortunately this means that you can’t filter based on response path if working across multiple bots.

(Sam Ward) #5

Thanks!

So I’ve tried adding this broadcast to the same bot as my other flows where
my users are, so now everything is on the same bot.

However, I’m seeing the same issue. The first broadcast message goes out
fine, but anything the user sends back doesn’t seem to be recognized.

There must be something simple I’m overlooking…

(Daniel Beckett) #6

Hi Sam,

Does the broadcast include a question or are they just responding independently? Doing a broadcast wouldn’t inherently open up your bot to react to received messages and instead you’d need a flow setup to handle the incoming messages. e.g. a flow setup with a catch-all or New Message trigger.

(Sam Ward) #7

Hi Daniel - yes, the first action in my broadcast flow is to ask a
question, and then I have a series of back and forth messages, like a
regular flow.

So should I handle it like this, by breaking this into two different flows

  • one broadcast to initiate with the users, and then send them to a
    different flow to interact with my questions, etc.?

In Broadcast Flow

  1. Broadcast to filtered users
  2. Trigger a Flow

In Survey Flow

  1. Ask a question action
  2. Respond
  3. etc. rest of flow as normal
(Sarah Palombo) #8

Hi Sam

As long as you have set up an instant broadcast flow, using ‘Ask a Question’ the bot will wait until the question is answered then will send another message or question.

Here’s a sample flow

If that’s not helping much, your interaction logs might help if not, if you give me an example of what you sent and what you wrote back (perhaps share your flow) you can email support@flowxo.com with a link to this thread we’ll see if we can get you going :slight_smile:

Sarah

(Sam Ward) #9

Thanks - I’ll try this sample flow out.

I now think my issue was due to creating multiple bots using the same
Twillio auth. token & number. Is it possible that caused a conflict with my
previous bot using the same number/token?

When I had both bots enabled, I started receiving 12300 - Invalid
Content-Type errors from Twillio. My previous flows stopped working too.
Even after disabling the new bot for my broadcast, I was still getting the
Twillio errors.

I had to go and re-enter the auth. token on my previous bot, and re-save
it. That seemed to resolve the issue.

We just launched a new flow campaign yesterday, so I haven’t had a chance
to circle back to the broadcast yet, but when I do, I’ll just add it to my
existing bot. Is that what you’d recommend?

Thanks!

(Daniel Beckett) #10

Hi Sam,

The Twilio issue may have been an authentication problem I suppose - difficult to say since I haven’t seen anyone run into that problem before. Nice find though, glad you discovered a solution! :slight_smile::+1:

Your broadcast flow should be fine with your existing bot but it’s worth keeping in mind that bots ‘subscribe’ users based on conversations so the list of broadcast recipients would be the users that have messaged that particular bot. If you’re doing targeted response path messages then this shouldn’t be a problem but I just thought I’d point it out to be sure.