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A Message Bot is the simplest form of automation in Xobito. A customer sends a message, the bot checks whether it matches one of your triggers, and if it does it sends one reply and stops.
Message Bots are stateless. They don’t remember that they replied to this contact a minute ago, and they don’t continue the conversation. If you need a multi-step back-and-forth, use a Bot Flow.

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What a Message Bot can send

A single outgoing message that contains:
  • Reply text — the body of the message.
  • Header (optional) — short text shown above the body.
  • Footer (optional) — short text shown below the body.
  • Up to three buttons — quick-reply buttons (button1, button2, button3). Each button just echoes its label back as a message — it does not branch the conversation like a Bot Flow does.
That’s it. No media, no list picker, no API call — for those you want a Bot Flow.

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Create a Message Bot

Go to Automations → Message Bots and click Create.
Message bot creation form
1

Name it

Give the bot an internal name — e.g. “Business hours reply” or “Price list auto-answer”. Customers never see this.
2

Pick who it applies to

Choose Lead or Customer — the bot will only fire when the contact has that relationship type.
3

Pick the trigger type

Choose one of the four reply types (see below).
4

Enter keywords

For exact-match and contains-match types, enter one or more keywords separated by commas. Leave empty for the other two types.
5

Write the reply

Type the reply text. Optionally add a header, footer, and up to three quick-reply buttons.
6

Save

The bot is live as soon as it’s saved and active.

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The four trigger types

Every Message Bot uses one of these four rules to decide whether to fire:
IDNameWhen it firesKeywords field
1On exact matchThe incoming message equals a keyword exactly (whitespace trimmed)Required — comma-separated keywords
2When message containsThe incoming message contains any of the keywords as a substringRequired — comma-separated keywords
3On first messageThe contact is messaging your business for the first timeIgnored
4If no keyword matchesNothing else caught this message — the fallbackIgnored
Use Type 4 (no keyword matches) to build a catch-all “We’ll get back to you shortly” reply. It runs only when none of your other bots fire.

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Examples

  • Reply type: 1 (on exact match)
  • Keywords: hours, timings, open
  • Fires only when the customer sends exactly “hours”, “timings”, or “open”.
  • Reply type: 2 (when message contains)
  • Keywords: hi, hello, hey
  • Fires for “hi”, “hi there”, “hello team”, “hey guys” — anything containing any of those words.
  • Reply type: 3 (on first message)
  • Keywords: leave blank
  • Fires the first time a lead or customer ever messages your workspace.
  • Reply type: 4 (if no keyword matches)
  • Keywords: leave blank
  • Fires when none of your other bots caught the message. Useful as a polite “A team member will get back to you” message.

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Personalising the reply

Inside the reply text, header, and footer, you can insert any of these merge fields — they’ll be replaced with real values when the bot runs: 
{contact_first_name}
{contact_last_name}
{contact_id}
{contact_company}
{contact_email}
{contact_phone_number}
{lead_status}
{lead_source}
{lead_assigned}
Example: 
Hi {contact_first_name}, thanks for messaging! Our hours are Mon-Fri 9-5.
Custom fields are not yet available as merge fields inside Message Bots. Only the predefined fields above are substituted.

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Buttons

You can add up to three quick-reply buttons. Each button is just a label — when the customer taps it, WhatsApp sends the label back as their next message. This means you can chain a button press into another bot:
  • Message Bot A replies with buttons “Pricing”, “Support”, “Hours”.
  • Message Bot B has trigger type 1 (exact match) with keyword Pricing — it fires when the customer taps the first button.
That’s as close as Message Bots get to branching. For anything more complex, use a Bot Flow where buttons natively branch to different nodes.
Each button label can be up to 20 characters — the WhatsApp limit.

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Activating and deactivating

Each Message Bot has an active / inactive toggle on its row. When inactive:
  • The bot’s configuration is kept.
  • It will not fire on incoming messages.
  • You can re-enable it at any time without re-entering anything.
This is handy for pausing a seasonal bot, or for temporarily turning off the fallback bot while you test a new one.

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Cloning

Use Clone to duplicate an existing bot. You get a copy you can then rename and tweak. Useful when you want near-identical bots for Lead vs Customer.

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Execution order

When a message comes in, Xobito checks automations in a defined order:
  1. Bot Flows (if any is active and matches)
  2. Message Bots (if no Bot Flow caught it)
  3. Default greeting / away message (if configured)
If a Bot Flow’s trigger matches the same keyword as a Message Bot, only the Bot Flow runs. If a Message Bot isn’t firing, check whether a Bot Flow is catching the keyword first.

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Permissions

To manage Message Bots, a staff member needs one or more of:
PermissionAllows
tenant.message_bot.viewSee the Message Bot list
tenant.message_bot.createCreate new bots
tenant.message_bot.editEdit existing bots
tenant.message_bot.deleteDelete bots
tenant.message_bot.cloneClone an existing bot
The workspace owner always has all of them.

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Feature availability

Message Bots require the message_bots feature on your subscription. If the Message Bots link is missing from the sidebar, your plan doesn’t include them.

Template Bots

Send an approved WhatsApp template on a trigger.

Bot Flows

Branching multi-step conversations with media and APIs.