How inbound WhatsApp replies are handled

Brett Storbeck

The WhatsApp channel is an Early Access feature. Contact your Account Executive for more information.

Overview

When you send a WhatsApp message from Pendula you can define a Reply expiry window.
The experience will wait at that node until either a reply is received or the reply expiry period elapses.
Pendula will process every inbound WhatsApp message that you receive which allows you to create an inbound or customer initiated channel to start an experience.

When an inbound WhatsApp message is received, Pendula looks for an active conversation using the combination of the sender’s number and the recipient’s number. An active conversation would be an experience where a WhatsApp message has been sent and the defined reply expiry period has not yet lapsed.
Active conversations are checked from newest to oldest, so if multiple WhatsApp conversations are active with the same number then the most recent conversation will be matched.
If a match is found, the experience proceeds down the Reply received path and the body of the response will be available as a merge field to be used in your flow.

If no active conversation matches that number pair, the message is sent to the Inbound Unmatched trigger for that number and a new experience is created.
This can happen if a reply is received after the reply expiry has elapsed, or if a message is received “out of the blue” or in error