I recently added a worthy tool to my technical arsenal.
AutoResponder for WhatsApp (basic version) brings Android users one step closer to being able to operate full-fledged chat-bots.
I’m currently using it to automate routine social interactions, such as coordinating drinks and eating plans, and have been informed by almost everybody that it is driving them mad. Success!
The Premium version unlocks all features and also allows you to integrate the app with Tasker – just about the best automation utility for Android. You can also set sequential responses to the same recipient.
It took some tweaking with the messages, but I’ve managed to begin some unattended interactions with it (‘Hi %first-name, how are you today?’ seems to always get past people’s “bot-radar”) and even successfully rebutted an invitation to get Mexican food with a reply that I would prefer Ethiopian – which, alongside Indian, is my favorite ethnic cuisine. I can automatically display initial interest in all inbound drinks invitations, whether they arrive in English and Hebrew, and pick up the chat with the planning already underway.
I’m impressed by the amount of features that the developers have built into the tool.
I use WhatsApp Business with my business line, so was able to limit the app to only run on the stock Android app in order to avoid sending my childish responses to business contacts. I can also specify minimum send-again intervals (so that people don’t receive a wildcard response every time they send a message). The contact and group filtering is a little less intuitive, and a number of real estate agents I am currently dealing with were bewildered to receive some accidental responses.
The similarity match setting also takes a bit of tinkering with. I wanted to send my automatic beer response whether beer was in lower case, with a capital ‘b’, or immediately suffixed with a question mark, as in ‘want to get a beer?’. However, turning down the similar match resulted in the response basically sending any time a word began with ‘be’. In terms of setup, the app needs the “Draw over other apps” permission to function.
The other negative is that the auto-responses also mark incoming chats as read and will eventually hide the notifications – so you still need to check periodically whether any chats are being conducted.
Overall, this is a cool app. I’d love to see something similar (or an actual bot) developed for Facebook – currently Messenger bots are only available on pages.
