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Instant message is the one online automation. It notices when a fan comes online and sends him a personal hello a few minutes later, as if the creator had just noticed him. Every opener is one you wrote. No AI is involved. For how automations run in general, see how automations work.

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Two different online nudges

OnlyStack has two, and they are not the same thing: While AI Chat is on, a fan who comes online is handed to the Engagement Agent, which decides whether he gets a nudge and writes it. It writes one only while Message him the moment he comes online, and take it back if he doesn’t answer is ticked in its settings, which it is by default. Instant message only sends when AI Chat is off.

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How it works

  1. It watches who is online. A fan counts as newly online only after he has been offline for a while.
  2. It queues a message for him, to go out a few minutes later, with a random extra delay so nudges never arrive at an exact time.
  3. Just before sending, it checks again. If he went offline, started chatting with you, was nudged recently, is blocked or is on a skip list, nothing is sent.
  4. It sends one of your openers for the time of day, with his name where you put it.
Fans past the limit it handles in one pass wait for the next pass. They are not dropped.

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Set it up

1

Write your openers

Open Edit automation. Slot pools (time-of-day openers) has one box for each part of the day: Early morning (5–9), Late morning (9–12), Early afternoon (12–15), Late afternoon (15–18), Evening (18–21) and Night (21–5). Write one opener per line. {name} fills in the fan’s name. One is picked at random each time.
2

Set your time zone

Your time zone (UTC offset) lets the morning and evening openers go out in your morning and evening. It does not move for daylight saving, so change it when the clocks change.
3

Save and enable

Choose the settings below, then press Save and enable.
A slot with no opener is skipped: No opener yet, so this slot is skipped.

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Settings

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What it never does

  • It never writes anything itself. Every message is one of your openers, as text. The slot editor offers Pick images, but Instant message sends text only.
  • It never interrupts a live chat. A fan who wrote to you recently is skipped.
  • It leaves a minimum time between two nudges to the same fan, and where a slot has more than one opener it avoids the line he got last time. A fan who never replies is nudged again each time that time passes, until he has not answered her last three messages in a row.
  • It never nudges a fan who has not answered her last three messages in a row. See how AI Chat works.
  • It never messages a new fan before his welcome. A new fan’s first message is the welcome.
  • It never nudges a blocked fan or one who has opted out.
  • It sends nothing of its own while AI Chat is on. It stays switched on and passes fans coming online to the Engagement Agent.

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Message everyone online

A different thing: Message everyone online is a single broadcast that you send by pressing a button, not an automation. See mass messages.