Sending a text from a board is the easy half of the job. The harder half starts when the customer answers. A reply of "Yes, see you then" or "Can we move it to Friday?" lands somewhere, and someone has to read it, decide what it means and update the right item.
For teams that run work in monday.com, that manual step is where delays and missed changes creep in. This guide explains how two-way SMS works with the DataFlows SMS integration for monday.com, how replies are classified by intent, and how Reply-to-Action rules turn those replies into board actions.
You will learn what intent classification and confidence scores are, how to set up rules that act on a reply, and what safeguards to put around them.
What Is Two-Way SMS in monday.com?
Two-way SMS in monday.com is a messaging setup where a board item can send a text to a customer and the customer's reply comes back and is tied to that same item. Instead of reading replies in a phone or a shared inbox and copying the outcome onto the board by hand, the reply is received, read for its meaning and linked to the item that triggered the original message. With DataFlows, every reply to a DataFlows SMS is classified by intent (confirm, cancel, reschedule, question or complaint) and given a confidence score. That classification can then drive rules that update a status column, create a task, notify a teammate or assign someone. The system classifies replies; it does not write replies for you. People stay in control of what is said to the customer, while the board stays accurate without constant manual updates.
Why It Matters for Australian Businesses
Many Australian service businesses already manage jobs, bookings and customer requests on monday.com boards. Trades, clinics, agencies, installers and retailers all send reminders and updates by SMS because customers read texts quickly.
The gap appears after the send. A customer who replies "can't make it" at 7:40am needs a different response from one who replies "thanks". If both sit unread in a phone until someone checks, the cancelled slot stays booked and the team plans around the wrong information.
Two-way handling closes that gap. Replies reach the board quickly, the important ones are flagged, and routine confirmations can update themselves. Because DataFlows is an Australian platform, it also includes guardrails that suit local practice, such as automatic STOP and UNSUBSCRIBE handling and quiet hours so messages do not go out in the middle of the night.
Key Benefits
- Replies become data. Each reply is classified as confirm, cancel, reschedule, question or complaint, so the meaning is available as structured information rather than free text.
- Boards stay current. A rule can move an item to "Confirmed" or "Cancelled" the moment the customer answers, without anyone retyping the outcome.
- Fewer missed replies. Rules can notify a teammate or assign an owner, so a complaint or a question does not sit unseen.
- A safety net for uncertain replies. Low-confidence replies can be routed to a person instead of being acted on automatically.
- Classification without extra setup. Even with no rule in place, classification still happens and can be shown as its own board column.
- Human-written messages. The feature reads replies. It does not draft or send replies on its own, so your tone and wording stay yours.
How Replies Become Board Actions
The flow has three parts: the outbound message, the classification, and the rule that decides what happens next. Understanding each part makes the rules easier to design.
Step 1: Send the message from an item
Replies are tied to messages sent from a board. In your board, open Automations, choose Create automation, search for "DataFlows" and pick "Send SMS via DataFlows". Attach it to a trigger such as a status change or a new item.
Then fill in the column that holds the recipient's phone number, the message text (which can reference other columns), the Sender ID, and optionally a Status column to record delivery status on the item. Replies to messages sent this way power the AI reply features and the Shared SMS Inbox. For a full walkthrough of this first step, read how to send SMS from a monday.com automation.
Step 2: Let intent classification run
When the customer replies, DataFlows classifies the reply into one of five intents:
- Confirm: the customer agrees, for example "Yes, that works".
- Cancel: the customer cannot or will not proceed.
- Reschedule: the customer wants a different time or date.
- Question: the customer is asking for information.
- Complaint: the customer is unhappy and needs attention.
Each classification comes with a confidence score. A clear "Yes confirmed, thanks" should score high. A vague or mixed message such as "maybe, depends on work" should score lower. That score is what makes rules safe to automate, because you decide how sure the system must be before it acts.
Step 3: Create Reply-to-Action rules
A Reply-to-Action rule watches incoming replies and fires when a condition is met. There are two kinds of trigger:
- Intent above a confidence threshold. The rule fires when the reply matches a specific intent, such as Cancel, at or above the confidence level you set.
- Low-confidence safety net. The rule fires when the system is not sure what the reply means, so a person can look at it.
When a rule fires, it can take any of these actions:
- Update a status column on the item, for example set Status to "Confirmed".
- Create a task so follow-up work is tracked on the board.
- Notify a teammate so the right person sees the reply straight away.
- Assign someone to the item so ownership is clear.
Classification without a rule
You do not have to build rules on day one. With no rule set, classification still happens and can be exposed as its own board column. That gives you a way to watch how replies are being read before you let any automation act on them. Many teams start here, review a week of results, and only then add rules.
Example Rule Set for a Booking Board
Imagine a board that tracks customer jobs, with a Status column, a phone number column and a date column. A simple set of rules could look like this:
- Confirm at high confidence: when the intent is Confirm and confidence is at or above your chosen threshold, set Status to "Confirmed".
- Cancel at high confidence: when the intent is Cancel and confidence is high, set Status to "Cancelled" and notify the scheduler so the slot can be reused.
- Reschedule: create a task for the coordinator to find a new time, and assign it to them.
- Question: notify the account owner so they can answer personally.
- Complaint: assign the item to a manager and create a task to follow up.
- Low confidence: notify a teammate to read the reply and decide.
Notice that none of these rules writes a message back. They change the board and alert people. When a human needs to respond, they reply themselves. In the Shared SMS Inbox, staff can reply and the message sends as a real SMS from the same number.
The Shared SMS Inbox
Board-level rules handle the routine cases. For everything else, DataFlows includes a Shared SMS Inbox that gathers every SMS conversation across every board in one place. monday's per-item Updates cannot show this cross-board view.
Each thread carries an AI-classified priority badge and a live link back to the monday item. That makes it quick to find the complaint among a day of confirmations. One current limit to keep in mind: the inbox is scoped to replies against the single-item "Send SMS via DataFlows" action. Reminders, conditional rules and campaigns are not correlated into the inbox yet.
How DataFlows Helps
The DataFlows SMS integration for monday.com connects over OAuth. You approve the permissions DataFlows needs (read board data, write back to configured columns, post Updates and create webhooks), then select the boards you want to use. One installation can cover several boards, and you can add more later. Every feature is scoped per board.
DataFlows SMS is installed on your monday.com account with the DataFlows install link. It is not listed on the monday.com app marketplace, so use the install link provided by DataFlows rather than searching for it there.
Once connected, the same boards can use more than reply handling:
- Reminder rules send texts before a date column, with business-hours exclusions. See SMS reminders from a date column.
- Conditional SMS rules fire when a Status or Dropdown column changes. See conditional SMS on status change.
- Bulk SMS campaigns send to a filtered group of items, with a recipient preview before sending. See bulk SMS campaigns from monday.com.
- Trackable links show a running click count in a Text column.
- Account guardrails include Quiet Hours, rate limiting, automatic opt-outs and Response and Opt-Out Reports.
DataFlows is pay-as-you-go with no monthly or annual fees. You buy SMS credits and top up when you need more.
Best Practices
- Start with the classification column. Watch how replies are read for a few days before turning on rules that change statuses.
- Set higher thresholds for risky actions. Cancelling a booking deserves a stricter confidence level than adding a note.
- Always add a low-confidence rule. The safety net makes sure unclear replies reach a person instead of being ignored.
- Keep messages easy to answer. Ask one clear question, such as "Reply YES to confirm or NO to cancel", so replies are easier to classify.
- Route complaints to a named owner. Assign them to a real person and create a task so they are not lost in a queue.
- Respect opt-outs and quiet hours. STOP and UNSUBSCRIBE replies are handled platform-wide, and opted-out numbers are blocked from every future send. Set a Quiet Hours window that suits your customers.
- Review the reports. Response and Opt-Out Reports show reply-time statistics and opt-out activity by board, which helps you tune your messages.
Conclusion
Two-way SMS is only useful if replies change something. With intent classification, confidence scores and Reply-to-Action rules, a customer's text can update a status, create a task, notify a teammate or assign an owner, all inside the monday.com board your team already uses.
DataFlows classifies replies and leaves the writing to your people. Ready to try it? Sign up at dataflows.com.au, install the monday.com integration and connect your first board. Questions are welcome at [email protected].