A message wizard enables assisted visual development of operations to process an incoming message for an application on a communication device. The wizard provides a series of pages from which a developer can select a desired action to perform on a target upon receipt of the incoming message and select a specific target comprising at least one data component from a set of candidate data components. The wizard then automatically generates code to implement the selected action on the target. A message page to visualize the message, target and the relationship between then and, as applicable, any script generated to implement the action may also be provided. The wizard may provide a data component type page to select a type of data component and then provide the series of pages in response to the type of data component selected.