Is the post ID available as a variable in a comment-triggered flow?

Question

Hi everyone,I am building an Instagram comment automation: one automation, triggered on anypost or reel, with a list of keywords. When someone comments, I want the flow tocall my own server with "Make an external request" and get back a link thatdepends on which reel was commented on, because each reel offers a differentresource.Two questions:1. Is the ID of the post or reel that triggered the flow available as a variable   that I can include in the external request?2. Is the text of the comment available the same way?Thanks a lot.

Anthony 56860 · Accepted Answer

Thanks Fabio, and sorry for the slow reply. Your answer settles it, and I confirmed it independently on my side: ManyChat's system fields carry no post ID, no comment text and no matched keyword, and the API can read flows but not create them. So there is genuinely no way around one automation per post.

Your three-block pattern is exactly what I ended up building: trigger on the post, an Action block that writes the resource key into a Custom User Field, then Start Automation into one central flow that makes the external request. The per-post work stays around a minute and the logic lives in a single place.

One caveat worth adding for whoever lands here later: the keyword has to be unique per resource and never reused, or two posts will collide on the same word. Thanks again for the quick and accurate answer.

Fabio Gaulke · Answer

Hi, ​@Anthony 56860!Unfortunately, Manychat does not provide the post ID or the comment text as native system variables to be used in standard flows...The only way to achieve this setup is to create a specific comment-triggered automation for each post or reel you want to run this on. In each of these individual triggers, you can set a Custom User Field with the specific information about that origin post, which you can then pass along in your external request. But that only covers the origin of the trigger, not the text of the comment.And if the flow itself is long or complex, a good practice to simplify maintenance is to keep the trigger automation very short:Set up the trigger for the specific post.Add an Action block to set the Custom User Field with that post's information.Use a "Start Automation" step to direct the flow to your main, central automation where the rest of the logic and external request take place.It will look something like this:This way, if you need to make changes to your main server request or logic in the future, you only have to edit one single flow instead of updating every post automation.Hope this helps!

Sign up

Welcome to the Manychat Community!