Glossary
Last reviewed:
Short answer
The terms you meet in DMowl, each in one or two sentences. Most questions about “why didn’t this send?” come down to three of them: the 24-hour window, active contacts and handling.
Messaging
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 24-hour window | Instagram lets a business send automated messages only within 24 hours of the person’s last message to you. Every new message from them reopens it. |
| 7-day window | Team members (not automations or the AI) may still reply by hand up to 7 days after the person’s last message. |
| Private reply | The DM an automation sends in response to a comment. It is allowed even if the person never wrote to you, once per comment. |
| Reachable | A contact inside the 24-hour window. Campaigns only go to reachable contacts. |
| Opt-out | A contact who wrote STOP, unsubscribe or “abmelden”. They get no more campaigns and running flows stop. |
In the app
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Automation | A trigger (comment, DM, story reply, mention, live comment) plus steps (messages, questions, folder, AI handover). Only switched-on automations run. |
| Draft | An automation that isn’t switched on yet. Automations created through the API or MCP start as drafts. |
| Contact | A person who interacted with your account: commented, sent a DM, replied to a story or mentioned you. |
| Active contact | A contact who received at least one automated message this month. Plan limits count these. |
| Handling | Who answers a chat right now: an automation, the AI agent, or the team. |
| Handoff | The AI agent passes a chat to the team, because it can’t answer, ran into an error or the AI replies are used up. A note in the chat says why. |
| Waiting for you | Chats with the team where nobody on the team has replied since the contact’s last message. |
| Folder | A group of contacts, e.g. “Leads”. Automations can add people, campaigns can target a folder. |
| Tracked link | A link card sent by DMowl. It counts clicks and lets shops attribute orders to the automation. |
| Conversion | An order from Shopify, Stripe or the API that came through a tracked link. |
| Sandbox | Demo mode before Instagram is connected. Nothing is sent to Instagram; the Simulator plays the follower. |
Still stuck? Write to us and tell us what you tried: hello@dmowl.com