Group Inclusion & Exclusion on Triggers

Triggers let you control how or when a flow begins or can allow a contact to join a group. A flow can be triggered by a keyword or missed call and scheduled on a future date.

What if you want a trigger to only act upon members of certain groups or to exclude groups?

First, navigate the Triggers tab and click the 'New Trigger' button.

You'll see the list of possible trigger types.

For our example, we'll choose to start a flow based on keywords in an incoming message:

At the bottom of this trigger's settings, we see that we can optionally choose to only include certain contact groups or to exclude contact groups.

In our example, we want contacts to send the keyword 'promo' that will trigger a Satisfaction Survey flow in order to receive a coupon. We don't want contacts who've already registered for this promo in 'Completed Registration' to be able to participate, so we've excluded them.

Only members of these two groups will be excluded from starting the Satisfaction Survey flow- all other contacts who send the keyword will be started in the flow.

Exclude the Open Tickets Group

When using the ticketing system, make sure to exclude the smart group 'Open Tickets' from other triggers.

When a ticket is open, incoming messages from your contacts may be interpreted as a keyword trigger or as a message that does not match any keywords, which could unintentionally launch the contact into a flow.
The Open Tickets smart group automatically adds a contact when a ticket is opened, causing the contact to be ignored by these other triggers while they are communicating with an agent through the ticket. Once the ticket is closed, the contact is automatically removed from the group, allowing their future messages to trigger flows normally, including keyword-based or unmatched-message triggers.

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Updated on: 24/08/2026