Dashboard
Inbox & Comment Automation
Read and reply to Instagram and Facebook messages, and turn Instagram comments into automatic DMs.
The Inbox in the dashboard has two parts: Messages, a shared inbox for direct messages, and Comment Automation, which sends a DM to people who comment a trigger word on your Instagram posts. Both are dashboard features with no public API endpoints.
Messages
Open Inbox → Messages at https://social-publish-kappa.vercel.app/dashboard/inbox/messages.
Supported accounts:
| Platform | Messages |
|---|---|
| Direct messages (professional accounts) | |
| Page messages |
Pick an account to see its conversations, newest first. The list refreshes every 10 seconds, and you can search loaded conversations and load older ones. Open a conversation to read its history (including image, video and other attachments) and reply. Press Enter to send and Shift+Enter for a new line. Replies can be up to 1,000 characters.
You can also jump to an account's inbox from its menu on the Integrations page with Open Inbox.
Meta only lets businesses reply within 24 hours of the person's last message. Replies outside that window may be rejected by the platform.
If the account was connected before message access was granted, the inbox asks you to reconnect it and allow message access.
Comment Automation
Open Inbox → Comment Automation at https://social-publish-kappa.vercel.app/dashboard/inbox/automations. When someone comments a trigger word on your Instagram post, Relaycast sends them a private DM and, optionally, replies publicly under their comment.
Comment automations work with Instagram professional accounts.
Create an automation
Click New automation and fill in:
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Name | For your own reference, up to 100 characters. |
| Account | The Instagram account to watch. |
| Post | Any post, or One post that you pick from the account's recent posts. |
| Trigger words | One or more words or phrases that trigger the DM. |
| Match style | How triggers are matched, see below. |
| Excluded words | Words that stop the automation even if a trigger matches. |
| DM message | The private message to send, up to 1,000 characters. |
| Public reply | Optional reply posted under the comment, up to 300 characters. |
The dialog has a tester: type a sample comment to see whether it would trigger the DM.
Match styles
| Style | Matches when | link matches... |
|---|---|---|
| Whole word | A trigger appears as a whole word or phrase. | "send link!" but not "linked" |
| Contains | A trigger appears anywhere in the comment. | "send link!" and "linked" |
| Exact comment | The whole comment equals a trigger, ignoring case, surrounding spaces and punctuation. | "Link!" but not "send link" |
Matching ignores case. Excluded words always win: if one appears as a whole word, the automation doesn't fire.
How it runs
- Each comment triggers each matching automation at most once, even if Instagram delivers the same comment event more than once.
- If the public reply fails, the DM that was already sent stays sent.
- Each automation shows how many DMs it has sent and a log of recent activity, including failures.
- Turn an automation off to pause it without deleting it.
If the Instagram account is disconnected, its automations are marked Account disconnected and stop running until you reconnect it.
Permissions
Everyone in a project can use the Inbox. Connecting the Instagram or Facebook accounts it relies on requires an owner or admin, see Social Accounts.
This page is also available as Markdown.