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Sender rules decide who wrote each incoming email or helpdesk message before topics, routing or Aide’s reply. They are in Settings > Helpdesk > Senders. For the five outcomes a rule can choose and how to block a sender, see Block spam and automated senders. This article covers the built-in recognition, contact forms, pasted conversations, what a rule can match on, and testing.

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The order Aide checks

  1. Your rules, from the top of the list down. The first rule that matches decides. Drag a rule to move it.
  2. Automated mail (built-in), when no rule matched.
  3. Everyone else: a customer.

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Automated mail (built-in)

The built-in row recognises seven kinds of mail no person wrote:
  • Mailing list or newsletter: mail sent to a list, such as newsletters and marketing.
  • No-reply sender: senders like noreply@ or do-not-reply@.
  • Notification sender: senders like alerts@, notifications@, updates@ or automated@.
  • Calendar invitation: Google Calendar, Zoom and Google Meet invitations.
  • Automated notice: “This is an automated message”, fax confirmations, login links, weekly summaries.
  • Another tool’s autoresponder: “We’ve received your email and will get back to you shortly” and the like.
  • Auto-reply flagged by the helpdesk: messages a connected helpdesk marks as an auto-reply.
A new email conversation that starts with automated mail is closed and listed in the Automated view. Nobody is notified, and Aide doesn’t reply or draft. An automated email on an existing conversation is kept on the thread and doesn’t reopen it. Select the built-in row and use its switch to turn the recognition off. Bounces and out-of-office replies are always dropped, and Aide never replies automatically to no-reply addresses or mailing lists, even when it is off.

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Contact forms

A form tool emails you from its own address, with the customer’s details in the text. To open those conversations for the customer:
  1. Click New rule and add a condition that matches the form tool, for example Sender address is any of [email protected].
  2. Under Then it is, choose A form relaying a customer.
  3. If the form uses its own labels, fill in Customer’s email is labelled and Name is labelled. Leave them empty to look for the usual labels: Email, Customer email, Your email, Name, Full name.
  4. Save the rule.
Aide reads the customer’s email and name from the labelled lines and opens the conversation for that customer, so replies go to them and not to the form tool. When no label is found, Aide uses the one email address in the text that isn’t yours or the form tool’s.
  • The details panel shows “From a form, email not verified”. Aide doesn’t act on that customer’s orders until they write from that address themselves.
  • A form with no customer email in it stays with your team. Aide doesn’t answer it.
  • On a Zendesk, Front or Gorgias conversation opened from a form, Aide drafts replies but doesn’t send them.
Forms and pasted conversations arrive by email or through a helpdesk only. These two outcomes aren’t available for WhatsApp, Messenger or Instagram.

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Pasted conversations

Choose A pasted conversation for messages that carry a whole chat, such as a transcript a teammate pastes into a helpdesk ticket. Aide reads the text as the customer’s words. On email, the customer is taken from the transcript.

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What a rule can match on

  • Sender address, Sender domain, Sender name, Sent to, Subject, Text, Channel and Inbox.
  • With a helpdesk connected: Posted via and Written by.
  • With WhatsApp, Messenger or Instagram connected: Sender phone, Sender id and Comment or DM.
Depending on the field, a condition uses “is any of”, “contains”, “starts with” or “matches pattern”. Choose whether all or any of the conditions must match, and add exceptions under Unless any of these. A condition on something a channel doesn’t supply, such as Subject on WhatsApp, never matches there.

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Test a message

Test a message at the top of Senders checks a message against all your rules. Pick the channel, fill in From, Subject and Message, and click Test. The result shows the outcome, Decided by, whether Aide replies automatically, and each rule in order with the conditions that matched. Test inside a rule does the same for that rule as you have it now, saved or not. Its Recent messages tab has Run over the last 500 messages, which replays the saved rule alone, as if it ran first, and shows how many messages it would match and how many would change. The built-in recognition isn’t replayed.

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Corrections from the inbox

Every filed message carries a chip saying how it was filed, and the thread records which rule or recognition did it. Correcting a message from the chip’s menu is covered in Block spam and automated senders. When you choose “This is a customer” on a filed message in a conversation that lives in Aide’s own inbox, Aide runs what was skipped: topics, routing rules and the Copilot draft. Ticking Always for this sender adds the sender to one of three rules at the top of Senders: “Marked from the inbox: A customer”, “Marked from the inbox: Automated or internal” or “Marked from the inbox: Ignore”. They are normal rules you can edit.

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Who can do this

Owners and admins can add, change, reorder and test rules, and tick Always for this sender. Agents can correct a single message from the inbox.