Set up SMS keyword auto-responders with RingCentral’s Workflow Builder
Updated: April 29, 2025
RingCentral’s Workflow Builder is nearing GA (General Availability). This is exciting news as it will imbue RingCentral voice, SMS, video, and team messaging with automated processes that you can create without any programming knowledge. As an example, we will be looking at how to search within incoming SMS messages for keywords and respond to them in kind. With Workflow Builder, you can treat SMS messaging as robustly as a modern email system.
To get started, after you log into the RingCentral desktop application or its equivalent website location, you should see “Workflows” on the left panel. If it is not there, look under “More” also on the left panel. You can drag and drop the icon to the main left panel if you would rather not have to access it under the “More” option.
When clicked, you will be taken to the dashboard area that lists all your existing workflows, if any. Click on the “Create workflow” button, where you see it on the display to start creating your new workflow. See Figure 2.
This tool makes it easy to respond to incoming SMS messages with automated replies that can be set up based on various scenarios. Choose from pre-built templates to create out-of-office replies or weekend do not disturb responses, or use a custom workflow to add advanced criteria.
For example, if you are sent a support request message, you can respond with a text message saying you will add it to the support queue and then post the details to the appropriate group within Team Messaging or even trigger an HTTP call to your support system’s API.
Building your automation
Once you select the “Create workflow” button and you choose to “Build your own workflow” you will be asked to define a new trigger for your workflow. In our example, we will set up a more complex workflow that has 3 steps.
Select “SMS received” from the list of options on the right panel. The trigger details area will now appear in the right panel, where you can enter in your more detailed information.
Next, you have to add at least one condition for the trigger to act upon. Figure 3 shows this for you. Click on the “+ Add conditions” area to enter your specifications.
[1] Here we are adding 2 conditions on what the incoming SMS message text content contains [2] with an “OR” [3] condition between them. This means that either one of these two conditions can exist in order to have the trigger activated. Click “Add” to secure the conditions for the trigger.
The next option is to consider if there is a potential for a high number of trigger actions, in this case, multiple SMS messages asking for product assistance coming from the same source mobile number. Since most carriers charge by the number of texts you send, it is a good idea to implement this “Frequency” control. You can see it at the bottom of the newly created trigger on the right panel. You can filter or throttle the number of times you respond to the trigger over a set time frame. In this situation, though it may be hard to tell if the requests for help are unique, to be on the safe side, it may make more sense to respond to each support request. For that reason, in our example, we are leaving the “Frequency” option in its default state. Click “Save” when you are done with the initial trigger creation.
So far, we only have a trigger event that will be watching for events to occur, now we have to create the actions that happen in response when the trigger is fired.
To build the next part of our custom workflow, we will need to add a new “Node” or “Step”. To do this, click on the plus sign that has the “Add a step” text below it. On the right panel, you will be asked what type of action you want to create, and in our case, we want to reply to the sender via SMS that we have received their request for support and will be working on it. Select “Send SMS” to create this type of response. The right panel should now look like that of Figure 4.
Be sure to select what number you will be sending the message from, as you can send it from a specific mobile number or from the same number that received the text message [1]. You can then either manually enter in a mobile number that you want the message sent to or simply choose to send it to the number that submitted it [2]. You can then enter in your response message [3]. You can keep it generic or add in some specific information by typing the “#” symbol to bring up a list of system variables that you can use. The sender’s name, phone number, message received data and time, and other data items are available.
When you have finished filling in this screen, click on “Save” to create the action. Next, we want to add another task to the workflow to send the content of the original incoming support request SMS to our tech support group within the RingCentral Team Messaging application. If you would rather auto-generate an API call to your support ticket system, you can do that as well by using the “Send HTTP Request” action, but the specifics of that action are beyond the scope of this article.
Once again, click on the plus sign, this time the one below “Send SMS” to add another action, and now choose “Send chat Message” to post to a team messaging group.
You will be asked what conversation or group to send the message to [1] and the content of this message. You can hit the pound key (#) to display a list of variables that can be used to add system-supplied data into the body of the message. [2] This can help make the message more personal. See Figure 5 for a visual of what this could look like.
You can name your automation if you want to change it from the offered “Untitled workflow” title. This can be done in the top left of the design area. Be sure to save and simulate your workflow before you enable it; make it active.
The design area of the newly created workflow should look like Figure 6, and you can see the steps as they flow within the workflow. At each step, there are also “+” signs to insert additional steps if they are desired. You can extend the workflow as needs arise or as you see areas that need adjusting.
When the workflow is enabled, we should see this as the incoming SMS message and the response back to the sender.
And the entry into the group chat called “Messenger Tests” will have this as an entry.
That’s it, you have just set up a Workflow Builder automation! With RingCentral Workflow Builder, you can now build more complex workflows and auto-responses to meet your marketing, sales, support, and other customer care needs.
To learn more about RingCentral Workflow Builder and see samples of other workflows you can build, visit our Workflow Builder Developer page.
