Using RingCentral Automator to send an SMS reply to missed calls

Important: prior to sending SMS please make sure you have permission from the recipient as outlined by our SMS policies.

RingCentral’s engineering team has created a new tool called “Automator,” a free Labs beta project that allows you to build your own custom workflows for RingCentral voice, SMS, video, and team messaging. With Automator, you can treat SMS messaging as robustly as a modern email system.

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

Go to this web address https://workflow.labs.ringcentral.com and log in with your RingCentral credentials. If there is still space available in the beta program, you’ll be able to log in and create your automation.

If you have access, you will see a simple interface that will list any Automator workflows that currently exist similar to this screen. If there is no automation then the list will be empty.

In our example, we will simply set up an automatic response when a call is missed. To create a new automation click on the “New automation” button. The following screen will appear.

For our simple example we will be responding to any call that is received that was not answered. Three other pre-built templates can respond to basic predefined triggers, so be sure to explore those as well. For now, select “Missed call auto-response” and click Next. The following screen shows.

Here you can name your automation if you want to change it from the offered title. [1] Then you must choose what phone number you want the message to be sent from. It will be connected to your RingCentral account and you can select it from a drop-down list. [2] Next, enter the text message that you want to send out. 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 text. [3] This can help make the message more personal if you want to.

The next option is to consider if there is a potential for a high number of trigger actions, in this case, multiple missed calls 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 control. [4] You can filter, or throttle, the number of times you get this kind of trigger and how many times you respond to it over a set time frame. Here we want to only send out a response message once every hour to the same number that calls us even if they call 10 or more times within the hour.

You can now save and test this automation or just save it if you have more work to do on it later. Just saving it does not enable it, so be sure to test it and then if you are happy with the setup turn it on. My sample would send out this auto-response.

That’s it, you have just set up an Automator automation! With RingCentral Automator, 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 Automator, and see samples of other workflows you can build, visit our Automator Developer page.

Please let us know what you think by leaving your questions and comments below. To learn more about RingCentral features make sure to visit our developer site and if you’re ever stuck make sure to go to our developer forum.

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