If a Rule is not executing as expected, review the following common causes:
1. Is the Rule activated? Deactivated Rules are skipped during evaluation. Check the Rules page to confirm the Rule's toggle is enabled.
2. Is the Rule using the correct text-matching type? If your Rule uses a text-matching Condition (Message Subject, Message Body, Message From, etc.), check which matching type is selected:
Words is recommended for most use cases. It matches exact whole words and avoids false matches.
Any matches partial strings and may cause unintended matches (e.g., "change" matching "exchange"). If your Rule is matching too broadly, switch to Words.
Only is very restrictive and requires an exact, complete match of the entire content. If your Rule is not matching when it should, consider switching from Only to Words.
3. Does the Rule have contradictory AND Conditions? All Conditions in a Rule use AND logic — every Condition must be met for the Rule to fire. A common mistake is adding both "Message Subject contains [keyword]" and "Message Body contains [keyword]" as Conditions in the same Rule. Because both must be true, the keyword must appear in both the subject and the body, which rarely happens with real Customer messages. Create separate Rules instead — one for the subject and one for the body.
4. Is the Conversation being handled by Gladly AI? Rules do not fire on Conversations that are being handled by Gladly AI. Rules only execute after the Conversation has been handed off to a human Agent. If you expect a Rule to fire on AI-handled Conversations, this is the likely cause.
5. Is the Trigger retroactive? Time-based Triggers (e.g., Conversation due date is Overdue by 60 minutes) only fire at the exact threshold moment. If the Conversation has already passed that threshold when the Rule was activated, the Rule will not fire retroactively. See [Rules Caveats and Limitations] for details.
6. Is a higher-priority Rule already handling the Conversation? Check your Rule sort order. If a less restrictive Rule higher in the list is assigning an Inbox, assigning an Agent, or sending an auto-reply, it will consume that Action, and your lower Rule will be ignored for that Action type.
7. Is the Rule using Message From or Message To for a Chat Conversation? Chat messages do not have "from" or "to" addresses. Rules that use the Message From or Message To Conditions will never fire for Chat Conversations.
8. Is Lookup before Rules enabled when it needs to be? If your Rule depends on Custom Attributes retrieved from a Lookup Adaptor, confirm that Lookup before Rules is enabled in your Conversation Workflow settings. Without it, the attributes may not be available when the Rule evaluates.