Can I make changes to a workflow that has already been published?
It’s possible to edit a workflow that has already been published. Simply choose the Edit option from the Actions menu on the Manage automation workflows page.
Note: please keep in mind that when you modify a block’s placement, replace a block with a different one, or delete a block, you may be removing the contacts that are already in that block from the workflow.
When in doubt, contact us via chat or contact form.
You will find examples of situations/scenarios that may disturb the operation of the cycle below.
Discrepancies in statistics
When amending a workflow that has already been published, there is a risk that some of your statistics will be lost, or that the workflow of elements will not be applied to some of the users that you want to reach. Substantial changes in a published workflow can result in a statistics reset.
If, for example, you start with a block Message Sent for message A, all contacts that got message A will be added to the workflow once the message is sent. If you then replace message A with message B in the block properties, all contacts that received message B will be added to the workflow once the message is sent. The number on the block will represent both messages A and B together, so it may look like message B was sent to way more contacts than it was.
On the other hand, if you delete a block and replace it with another one, the numbers get zeroed and all contacts currently in the block get removed from the workflow, affecting the number of “in progress” contacts, as well as the number of contacts going in and out of neighboring blocks.
Contacts leaving the workflow when reaching the end of it
The changes will not apply if we add an additional element at the end of the automation and the contacts have already gone through the entire workflow (they will work for future contacts though).
If in the future you plan on adding extra blocks while you already have the workflow running, add a Wait block at the end and set it to 999 days. Whenever you add new blocks to the workflow and want to „release” the existing emails waiting in the Wait block, just change the time to 5 minutes – our system will then force the emails out of the block and into the next one.
