Choose who gets an automated reply, and when

Open the number’s settings

In the sidebar, under Automation, click Integrations, then the WhatsApp Business card. You land on the Accounts tab.

Click the number’s row — the whole row is the control. A drawer opens, docked to the right on a desktop and rising as a full sheet from the bottom on a phone. Its header shows the number’s display name over the phone number.

Click the row, not an icon on it. These settings belong to the number.

The drawer has eight sections, in this order: Overview, Auto-reply behaviour, AI chatbot, Unreadable messages, Lead capture, Business hours, Send safety and Connection.

Overview is read-only and worth a glance first: it shows Connected or Disconnected, a quality pill, the messaging tier and a health score out of 100.

If you have an old bookmark for a WhatsApp settings page, it now lands on this Accounts tab. These settings moved onto the number.

Choose who gets an automated reply

Open Auto-reply behaviour. Its description is the scope:

Who gets an automated reply on this number, and how it lands. Applies to the AI chatbot too.

Reply to has three options:

Reply to governs the AI chatbot as well, not just keyword replies.

Pick either of the two restricted options and a caution appears:

Replies can't add anyone to your CRM, so a skipped contact stays skipped until something else captures them.

Take that literally. A stranger who messages a number set to Existing leads only gets silence, and nothing about that silence turns them into a lead. If most of your enquiries come from people who are not in the CRM yet, Anyone who messages is the setting you want.

The restricted options also offer a switch, Notify me when someone is skipped — Once per conversation. The contact is never told anything. Turn it on while you are finding out how often it happens.

Typing indicator is offered whichever option you choose — Show typing before the reply lands. — and it applies to the AI chatbot as well as keyword replies.

Set the pause and resume keywords

Still in Auto-reply behaviour, Pause keyword and Resume keyword sit side by side, suggesting PAUSE and RESUME. The three lines underneath are the whole feature:

Send one of these to a contact - from WhatsApp on your phone, or from Conversations - to pause or resume all automation for them: AI replies, auto-replies, follow-ups and campaigns.

The message only has to contain the keyword, in any capitalisation - "please PAUSE this one" matches "pause". It matches whole words only, so "stop" will not fire on "stopped". Campaign, follow-up and chatbot messages never trigger it.

Leave blank to switch off. Minimum 3 characters - a shorter word would match ordinary messages.

You send the keyword to the contact. The contact typing it does nothing.

The direction catches everyone out. You send the keyword to the contact — from WhatsApp on the business phone, or from the Conversations composer. A contact who types PAUSE at you changes nothing.

What it writes is the same block-list entry as Outbound control, so it pauses AI replies, auto-replies, follow-ups and campaigns to that person together, until the resume keyword or an unblock reverses it.

Anything shorter than three characters is refused with At least 3 characters - a shorter word matches inside ordinary messages., and the save bar reads Fix the pause/resume keyword to save until you correct it. Both fields may be left blank, which switches the keywords off.

Decide what happens to unreadable messages

Some messages arrive without content Raion Hub can read — ads that start a chat, for example. When Meta cannot deliver message content decides what to do:

Coexistence ad messages can arrive without readable content. Alert modes keep that placeholder out of the AI chatbot.

The third option blocks a real person’s automation without asking you again, so choose it only if you would rather handle those conversations by hand.

Set the hours the number answers

Open Business hours. The readout on the right counts the days the number actually answers, as {N} day active or {N} days active — so it can change when you flip a switch, without you touching a single checkbox.

• Restrict to schedule — The AI chatbot only answers during the times below. The day rows below stay editable with this switched off, but they do nothing until you turn it on.
• Off-hours response — disabled until Restrict to schedule is on. Its own hint flips with it: Answer ONLY within the schedule. when off, and Answer OUTSIDE the schedule (out-of-office mode). when on.
• Seven day rows, Mon to Sun, each a checkbox and a start and end time. An unticked day reads Off.

Off-hours response inverts the whole grid, and it is the one setting here that people get backwards. With it on, the hours you typed become the hours the number stays quiet. The app shows you what it really did: each day gains an indented line under it with the hours it actually answers.

A day whose end time is earlier than its start is allowed. It is read as running past midnight, and the day says so: End is before start — saved as an overnight window. That is a note, not an error.

Save

Nothing you changed has taken effect yet. The bar at the bottom of the drawer names every section you have edited — for example Unsaved: Auto-reply behaviour · Business hours — and turns to All changes saved once it is done.

Press Save changes. The toast reads Settings saved. Discard throws away everything in the drawer.

If part of it fails, the sections that did save keep their new values and the bar still lists the ones that did not, so pressing Save changes again only re-sends what failed.