A flow is a visual representation of conditional branch logic that’s applied to your contacts once they enter it. Once a contact has entered a flow, they interact directly with its nodes. Nodes are composed of actions and Split Actions, and determine the length of a flow, which can be as short as a single node or as long as you want.
Actions
An action represents some action(s) taken on behalf of your flow. Essentially, they’re commands that allow you to:
- Send a Message (will send a message and/or media attachment to active contacts who reach that node in your flow)
- Send a Message to Someone Else (outside the interaction taking place)
- Adding Labels to Responses
- Adding and Updating Contact Fields (with a value received in a response, for example)
- Adding or Removing Contacts from a Group
- Calling a Webhook
- Sending an Email
- Setting a Contact’s Preferred Language
- Starting Another Flow
- Starting Someone Else in a Flow
Actions are comprised of nodes that are executed immediately in order from top to bottom:
When you create a new flow, you’ll notice that we recommend sending a message to begin. This is an example of an action.
Creating an Action
Click the “Create Message” button to open the node’s editor pictured below.
Adding an Action to an Existing Node
Actions can be attached to other nodes, or exist on their own. Actions attached to other nodes are executed immediately in order from top to bottom.
In the example below, three actions are grouped to register a new patient. When a contact passes through this node series, the actions occur in the order in which they’re stacked:
- An email is sent alerting our team of doctors that a new patient has registered.
- The contact is added to the “New Registrations” group.
- The contact is sent a message using the Send Message action that asks for her due date.
To add an action to an existing node, click on the blue “+” symbol on the bottom right corner of the existing node and select an action from the dropdown menu in the new node.
Changing the Order of Actions within a Node
To change the order of actions within a node series, move your cursor over the top left corner of the action you want to move, then click the “^” icon.
In this example, we moved Send Message to the beginning of the series of actions in a node cluster, so it will send before the Send Email and the Add to Group actions.
Deleting an Action
To delete an action, move your cursor over the node you want to delete and click on the “x” icon. The node will turn red and ask for confirmation. Click the “x” icon again to complete the deletion process.