Support
Troubleshooting
Organized by symptom: what probably happened, and exactly where to look — from silent triggers to missing DMs.
“My flow didn’t fire”
Someone commented or messaged, and nothing happened. The likely causes, in the order they actually occur:
- The flow isn’t published — drafts never run from live events, and edits to a published flow don’t go live until you publish again. Check the status pill in the flow editor.
- The trigger is paused — pausing is easy to forget, and triggers pause automatically when their account disconnects. Check the trigger card at Automations → Triggers.
- The keyword didn’t match — matching ignores case, but Exact mode wants the whole word. “GUIDE!” matches Contains, not always what Exact expects.
- A frequency guard did its job — once per post per person is on by default; repeat commenters are skipped deliberately. The trigger card’s “skipped” counter counts these: matched, but didn’t run.
- The contact opted out — anyone who sent STOP is excluded from automation until they send START.
- The account has a connection problem — a warning status on the Accounts page pauses everything that depends on it.
“The flow ran, but the DM never arrived”
When a run starts but a message doesn’t land, the run itself tells you why. Open the flow’s Runs page and read the failure reason — the usual suspects:
- 24-hour window expired — apart from the opening DM of a comment-triggered flow (which Ravela sends as a private reply to the comment), Instagram only allows automated messages within 24 hours of the contact’s last message. The run ends gracefully; it isn’t an error in your flow.
- Opening comment message unsupported — a cold-comment flow must begin with text, optionally with quick replies. Move media, carousels, URL buttons, checkout and delivery steps after the commenter responds and opens the 24-hour window.
- Private-reply allowance unavailable — Instagram permits one private reply per comment and only for seven days. Ravela stops rather than attempting a duplicate or expired reply.
- DM limit reached — Instagram caps automated DMs per hour, so during spikes messages queue and send when the limit resets. Delayed, not dropped; it only fails after repeated retries can’t get through.
- Contact opted out — a STOP arriving mid-conversation ends the run on the spot.
- Account disconnected — the connection dropped mid-run; fix the account, then re-run interest will return with the next trigger.
“My test code didn’t start the flow”
Live-test misfires are almost always one of five things:
- The session expired — test codes live for one hour. Start a fresh test.
- The draft wasn’t saved — the test runs the latest saved draft, not what’s on your screen. Save, then test.
- You DMed from the wrong side — the code must be sent to your connected account from a different account (your personal one), not from the connected account itself.
- The test account once sent STOP — opt-outs apply to testers too. Send START from that account first.
- It’s a raffle flow — raffles are tested from Automations → Raffles, not with a test code.
“My account shows a warning — or vanished”
Two different symptoms, one family of causes. An account showing a warning status on the Accounts page (usually an expired token) keeps its row and offers Reconnect — click it, log in, done. An account that disappeared from the list means Instagram revoked the access itself — a password change or removing the app from Instagram’s settings does it. Connect again with the same Instagram login and everything returns: contacts, conversations, flows.
Either way, triggers that paused during the outage stay paused until you reactivate them — check Automations → Triggers after any reconnect. And you often get warning shots before a break: token-renewal warnings appear in the Activity feed and the digest email days ahead.
Where to look, in order
When anything misbehaves, the same five surfaces answer nearly every question:
- 1The flow’s Runs page — every run with its status and failure reason; open a run for the step-by-step timeline.
- 2The trigger card — active or paused, run and skipped counters, and when it last ran.
- 3The Accounts page — connection status, with Reconnect where it’s needed.
- 4The Activity feed — the Issues tab collects failures, disconnects, rate limits, and opt-out skips; the All tab includes early warnings too.
- 5The activity digest email — a daily or weekly summary that flags account issues you might have missed in-app.
“The public comment reply was skipped”
Usually this is the honesty guard working as designed: Ravela posts the public “check your DMs” reply only after Instagram accepts the outbound send for that exact flow run. If the person opted out, the opening message was unsupported, the allowance expired, or Instagram rejected the send, it stays quiet rather than making a promise after a known failure.
During big spikes there’s a second cause: Instagram caps public comment replies at roughly sixty an hour per account, and Ravela retries the excess as capacity frees up. The replies lag; the DMs keep flowing.