Unbabel's standard workflow presupposes that a customer will create a ticket, and therefore, the outbound reply will always come after the first translation. But what if you wish to reach out to a customer first?

You won't find the Unbabel button to request a translation, as the ticket is not yet initialized. As such, you will need to create the ticket by posting any comment and trigger a translation. If the correct language selection does not happen immediately, you can manually change the ticket language and thus force a translation.

You can post the comment as an internal note if you don't wish the recipient to have access to it later. Exceptionally for first comments, Unbabel will be able to automatically translate a private note.

After you make sure the automatic translation is posted and the Unbabel tags added, write a message and click the Unbabel button to translate it, or alternatively,  post an internal note starting with #unbabel to send out a message. From that moment on, you're business as usual and the normal flow will be instilled.

Note: it is not enough to add the Unbabel tag. The first Unbabel translation must be present in the ticket for this method to work.