Testing rules before going live

You do not have to guess. Before a Workflow (an automation that acts on comments) touches a single comment on Facebook or Instagram, you can check exactly what it would do. There are two safety nets, and you can use both:

1. Preview — run a sample comment through your branches with no calls to Meta at all.
2. Observe-only mode — for a Workflow created from a template, turn it on but have it only record what it would do, without doing it.

And even after you go live, the most common first action, Flag, is reversible. So the worst realistic outcome — a comment hidden that shouldn’t be — is one you can undo. This page shows the safe path from “I built a Workflow” to “it’s running in production.”

Preview a branch without touching Meta

The preview runs a comment you supply through the Workflow’s branches (a branch is a set of conditions plus the actions to run when they match) and reports what would happen. It is completely safe: no comment is hidden, no reply is posted, nothing is written to your Audit Log, and no call is made to Facebook or Instagram. It is a pure dry run.

For each branch, the preview tells you:

• whether the branch matched,
• for every condition (a test the comment must pass) in that branch, whether that condition matched and a short human-readable reason, and
• which actions would fire if that branch matched.

You can preview a Workflow before you save it, or preview a saved one. The Workflow editor has two places to do it:

• Test your workflow — a bar where you type the comment text, an Author and a platform, then click Run (or press Enter). It reports which branch would match first. The Quick chips under it fill the bar with one of the built-in sample comments.
• Live Preview — a panel that runs a fixed set of built-in sample comments, plus one comment you type yourself, through your branches and shows which ones match.

Either way the sample comment is one you type or one of the built-in samples. The preview does not pull in your recent real comments — for that, use observe-only mode, below.

Preview cannot change anything

The preview uses the same matching logic as the live engine, but it only reads — it never hides, replies, deletes, or logs. Running a preview as many times as you like has zero effect on your comments or your usage.

Preview shows every branch, not just the winner

There is one important difference between the preview and live moderation. The preview reports the match status of every branch in isolation. Live moderation does not: for a given comment, only the first matching branch in the highest-priority matching Workflow actually fires, and everything below it is suppressed.

So a preview can show two branches both matching, when in production only the first of them would ever run. Read the preview top to bottom and treat the first matching branch as the one that would fire. For the full precedence rules, see How workflows are evaluated.

Observe-only mode: run it live, act on nothing

Preview tests one comment at a time against comments you type in. Observe-only mode is the next step up: it runs the Workflow against your real incoming comments, but every action is simulated — recorded in the Audit Log with a simulated status, with nothing sent to Meta.

This is the honest way to answer “would this Workflow have caused problems?” You let it watch live traffic for a while, then read the log to see exactly which comments it would have hidden or replied to — before it has the power to actually do so.

How a Workflow gets into observe-only mode

There is no observe-only switch in the Workflow editor. A Workflow is in observe-only mode when:

• You created it from a template. A Workflow made from a template arrives switched off and in observe-only mode. Turn it on and it starts observing.
• You restored a version that was observing. Restoring an earlier version of a Workflow also restores whether that version was observing or live.

A Workflow you build from scratch is not observe-only: once you turn it on, its actions run for real. To try a hand-built rule safely, use the preview above, start with a reversible action such as Flag, and watch the Audit Log closely after you turn it on.

On the Automation page, an observing Workflow carries an Observing badge, and the list legend shows it as Observing (dry-run — nothing is sent). That is a different state from Shadowed: a Shadowed Workflow is one that can never fire, because a Workflow above it always matches first. Observing Workflows do match — they just don’t act on Meta.

To end observe-only mode, click Go live — on the Workflow’s row on the Automation page, or in the observing banner on the Workflow’s Overview tab. Its actions then run for real.

An observe-only Workflow still wins its slot

Observe-only does not mean “inert.” A higher-priority observe-only Workflow still counts as the match for a comment and still suppresses lower-priority Workflows — it just simulates its own actions instead of performing them. If a live Workflow below it stops firing while you are testing, the observe-only one above it is matching first. See How workflows are evaluated.

The safe rollout, step by step

1. Preview against sample comments. Type in a comment you expect to match, and one you expect not to match. Confirm the right branch matches each and the actions listed are the ones you intended.

2. Turn the Workflow on in observe-only mode. If you started from a template, it is already observe-only; switch it on and it evaluates real comments but only simulates its actions. (A Workflow built from scratch has no observe-only mode — skip to step 5 and start it on a reversible action.)

3. Let it run, then read the Audit Log. Go to Analytics → Audit Log and look at the simulated actions. Every entry shows the Workflow name and the action that would have fired. Ask: is it matching the comments you wanted, and only those?

4. Escalate to live actions. Once the log looks right, click Go live so its actions run on Meta.

5. Start with reversible actions. For the first live version, prefer Flag (which hides the comment and can be undone) over anything one-way. Widen to replies or direct messages once you trust the matching. See Start with reversible actions.

Screenshot — pending capture The Audit Log under Analytics, showing an automation that fired

The Audit Log (Analytics → Audit Log) is where you review what a Workflow did — or, in observe-only mode, what it would have done.

”It hid a comment it shouldn’t have”

This is the fear that keeps people from enabling a Workflow, so here is the plain answer: on Facebook and Instagram, a wrongly hidden comment is recoverable.

Symptom: a Workflow hid a comment (its status is Flagged) that you wanted to keep visible.

Cause: a branch’s conditions were broader than you expected and matched the comment, and its Flag action hid it. Flag hides the comment on Meta (it sets is_hidden=true on Facebook, hide=true on Instagram) and sends you a push notification.

Fix: un-hide it. Open the comment in the Inbox and click Unhide in its action row, or let a Workflow’s Allow action run on it; either un-hides it on the platform (it sets the hidden flag back to false). The comment becomes visible again. Clicking Approve alone only changes the comment’s status in the Inbox — it does not un-hide it. See Restoring a comment.

Prevention: preview and run in observe-only first (above), and narrow the condition that over-matched. Keyword matching is case-insensitive and matches partial text — the keyword art also matches “smart” and “party” — so tighten broad keywords and prefer match all over match any when you need every term present.

Delete is the one that isn't reversible

Flag hides (reversible). Delete is described in the editor as “Irreversible action… It cannot be undone,” and it means it: on Facebook and Instagram, Delete removes the comment from the platform, and it cannot be brought back. To take a comment down while you are still testing a rule, use Flag, which you can undo. See Actions reference.

Start with reversible actions

The safest first live action is one you can take back. On Meta, that is Flag: it hides the comment and notifies you, and an Allow action or Unhide in the Inbox un-hides it. One-way actions — Reply, Reply with AI, Private reply (DM), Send message, Like, Delete — post or remove real content, or send real messages, and none of that can be undone from the tool. Add those only after observe-only (or a careful first run on Flag) has shown the matching is clean.

Input comment

curious_customer Facebook

Is this a scam? Seems too cheap to be real

↓

Matched condition

Keywords: "scam" (match any)

↓

Resulting action Flag

A broad keyword like 'scam' will match genuine questions, not just spam. In preview this branch matches; in observe-only mode you'd see it in the Audit Log as a simulated Flag before it ever hides anything. If it goes live and hides this real question, Unhide in the Inbox (or an Allow action) un-hides it.

One workflow acts per comment

Only the highest-priority matching Workflow fires for a comment, and only its first matching branch. When you test a new Workflow, remember an existing higher-priority one may already be handling the comments you are aiming at. How workflows are evaluated covers the full order.

Related

• How workflows are evaluated — first-match-wins, priority, and why the preview shows more matches than production.
• Conditions — every condition type and exactly how each one matches.
• Actions — which actions are reversible and which are one-way.
• Restoring a comment — un-hide a comment a Workflow hid.