Journey builder

The journey builder is where you draw the steps a contact follows once they're enrolled. You add nodes to a canvas from a searchable palette, connect them with edges, and configure each one in a panel on the right. It opens automatically when you create a journey; from an existing journey's page, open it with Edit. See Journeys for creating a journey and choosing its trigger.

Working on the canvas

The rail on the left is a searchable step palette. Drag a step onto the canvas, or click it to drop it below your current graph. New steps land in an open spot near where you placed them; the builder nudges a step aside rather than stacking it on another. Start and End can each only appear once, so the palette hides them once one of each exists.

Connect steps by dragging from a step's bottom handle to the top handle of the next one. Dropping a connection onto an existing edge inserts the new step in the middle of it, rather than making you rewire both ends by hand. Select a step by clicking it, and press Backspace or Delete to remove a selected step or edge. The canvas snaps to a 16-pixel grid as you drag, and a Tidy up button in the top-right straightens a messy layout in one click. A minimap appears once a graph passes eight steps.

Click Save to persist the graph; it's disabled until you've made a change. For an active journey, Save only stages your edits on a working draft. Enrolled contacts keep travelling the live version until you promote the draft, which is what a second button, Publish changes, appears to promote the saved draft to the live version. Publish is disabled while there are unsaved changes or unresolved issues.

The step kinds

Ten step kinds make up a journey graph. Start and End are the fixed endpoints; the other eight are inserted from the palette and configured in the side panel.

• Start: the entry point. Every journey has exactly one, and it needs no configuration.
• Send email: delivers an email template to the contact. Shows Choose a template until you pick one.
• Wait: pauses the contact for a set duration before advancing. Shows Set a duration until you set one.
• Branch: evaluates a condition against the contact and splits the path into Yes and No. Shows Define a condition until you set one.
• Update tags: adds or removes tags on the contact. Shows Choose tags until you pick at least one.
• Update lists: adds or removes the contact from lists. Shows Choose lists until you pick at least one.
• Update field: sets a field on the contact to a fixed value. Shows Choose a field until you set a field and a value.
• Notify: emails your team when a contact reaches this step. Shows Set a recipient until you set a valid recipient email.
• A/B split: randomly splits contacts between two paths, A and B. Defaults to a 50/50 split, which counts as configured on its own.
• End: the terminal exit. Every journey has exactly one, and it needs no configuration. A contact who reaches it is marked completed.

Configuring a Branch step

Select a Branch step to open its side panel. The condition is built visually with the same segment condition builder used for segments: stack one or more rules and choose whether a contact must match all of them or any of them. A contact who matches routes down Yes; everyone else routes down No. An optional Label on the card field, for example Has opened previous email, is for your own reference on the canvas; it plays no part in evaluating the condition.

What the builder checks

An issues indicator in the top-right corner of the canvas lists everything wrong with the graph; click it to open the list, and click any issue to jump to the step it's on. The same checks run again, server-side, when you activate a journey or publish changes, so a graph with open issues can't go live even if you ignore the indicator. The checks include:

• Exactly one Start step and exactly one End step (Add a Start step, Only one Start step is allowed, and the equivalent for End).
• Every step is configured, for example Send email step has no template selected or Wait step has no duration set.
• Every Branch step has both a Yes and a No path out of it, and every A/B split step has both an A and a B path out of it.
• No step, other than End, is a dead end. A step with nothing connected out of it is flagged: (step) step is a dead end, connect it to a next step.
• Every step is reachable from Start. A step nothing connects into is flagged as unreachable.