Building a Journey

A journey is built from its entry flow. The screen follows the Jump To nodes from there, proposes the steps and lets you correct them before saving. What the customer sees as a result is in Journeys.

The journey list

Conversational → Journeys shows each journey with:

its name, or Unnamed journey;
a summary: Entry: flow name · 3 steps · Sequence;
its status: Shown to the customer, Ready, but turned off, Still to finish or Not shown, the last one with the failing rules in parentheses, for example Not shown (V2, V7). The statuses are explained in Rules and Status.

The list cannot check rule V6, because that needs a walk through each journey's Jump To nodes. That rule is checked when you open the journey.

Below it, Flows no journey mentions lists the tenant's flows that are neither in a step nor excluded in any journey. That is not an error: many flows are not part of an errand. If one should be, it still has to be added.

Creating a journey

Click New journey.
Type a Name, for example Customer onboarding. The customer does not see it: it is how you find the journey in the list and in the Conversation Insights funnel selector.
Pick the Entry flow, the flow the customer comes in through. As soon as you pick it, the screen proposes the steps.
Review the proposal and click Use this proposal. The steps are copied into the editor for you to change.
Adjust the steps: give each one the name the customer will read, assign or exclude the flows that are left, and choose the mode.
If you want to measure it in Conversation Insights, build the funnel.
Turn on Enabled and click Save.

Nothing sticks until you click Save, the Enabled switch included. Using the proposal only copies its steps into the editor.

The entry flow cannot be changed once the journey is saved. On a saved journey the selector still lets you pick another flow, and the screen proposes steps from it, but saving keeps the original entry. You would end up with steps built for one entry in a journey that declares another, and it will most likely stop showing because of rule V7. To change the entry, create a new journey and delete the old one.

How the proposal is built

Propose steps follows the Jump To chain from the entry flow and builds a step proposal. It is a deterministic analysis of how the flows connect, with no artificial intelligence: the same graph always gives the same proposal. It writes nothing.

The proposal is computed on its own when you pick the entry flow and every time you open the journey. The Propose steps button computes it again, for example after you change a flow.

Which flows are included

The Jump To nodes followed are those of each flow's latest version, published or not. A Jump To that is still a draft counts for the proposal, even though the customer only follows those of published versions.
Up to 200 flows are walked. If the graph is larger, the proposal is incomplete and says so.

How steps are numbered

Each flow lands in a layer, and the layer number is the longest path from the entry. A flow that can be reached through a shortcut and also through the long path lands in the long path's step: the shortcut does not decide the numbering. Jumps back to an earlier flow do not count for numbering either.

Menus and shortcuts

A flow that jumps to four or more destinations gets special treatment, and the proposal decides what it is:

A menu, if its destinations barely connect to each other: at most one jump among them for every four destinations. Its destinations are kept together in one step.
A resumption shortcut, if its destinations form a chain, like a flow that lets the customer go back to wherever they left the errand. The numbering follows the chain, not the shortcut.

The proposed mode comes from the flow of this kind closest to the entry: Checklist if it is a menu, Sequence in any other case.

Which flows it proposes to exclude

The entry is never excluded. For the rest, the first of these rules that applies wins:

It never speaks to the customer. The flow has no node that shows or asks the customer anything, so it is not a stage of their errand.
It only dispatches. The flow jumps to two or more destinations and has no node that asks for or stores anything. Message, Interactive Options and AI Router do not count as content.
Its name suggests a way out of the errand. The flow's alias or name, regardless of accents, contains words such as error, fallback, no-match, invalid, soporte, support, ayuda, help, asesor, agente, cancel, abandon, despedida, salir, exit, fail, rechaz, reject, fuera-de, timeout, expir, finish, cierre, gracias, thank or goodbye. It is the weakest of the three.

The name rule also catches real stages. A signature flow called closing-help or one called finish-documents is proposed for exclusion. Review the excluded list before saving and bring back the ones that are a step.

Proposed names

A step with a single flow is named after that flow. A step with several flows is named Paso N, and the customer does not see that name because it only repeats the position. Those are exactly the steps that most need a name, and the screen points them out under Some steps have no name of their own: each chip takes you to the name field.

Proposal warnings

The proposal can come with warnings. They block nothing, but they explain why the map looks the way it does. The screen shows them as the system writes them, in Spanish:

Warning	What it means
El flujo de entrada no existe en este tenant	The entry flow does not exist. There is no proposal: pick another entry.
Hay saltos hacia flujos que no existen en este tenant	A Jump To points at a deleted flow. Fix it in the Bot Builder.
Hay flujos que saltan a sí mismos; no cuentan como paso	A flow has a Jump To to itself. Not an error; it just does not count for numbering.
Hay saltos que vuelven a un paso anterior; no se usan para numerar	There are jumps back, for example to correct a piece of data. They are drawn but do not decide the numbering.
El recorrido supera el máximo de flujos que se recorren; falta parte del grafo	The 200-flow limit was reached. Whatever lies beyond it is not in the proposal.

The journey map

The map draws the flows reached from the entry, from left to right. Each flow shows its name, its alias and a tag:

its step number, with the step name;
Entry, on the entry flow;
Excluded, with a grey dashed border;
Unassigned, with a warning dashed border: it is neither in a step nor excluded.

There are three kinds of arrows:

Chain, a solid line: the path the steps come from.
Shortcut, a dashed line: why two flows ended up in the same step.
Back, a dotted line: why a step looks out of order.

Clicking a flow selects it in the preview and in Why it ended up here. On a narrow screen the map starts closed: open it with Show the map. The steps and the reasons are all below it anyway.

Why it ended up here

For the selected flow, this card explains the proposal's decision, top to bottom:

What it is in the graph: a menu, a resumption shortcut or one more flow of its layer.
What the proposal did: it is the entry, it was put in step N, or it was left out of the steps.
Which rule excluded it, if it was excluded.
The concrete detail for that flow, for example it is 3 jumps from the entry along the longest path, and that layer became step 3, or, for a menu, how many destinations it fans out to and how many jumps there are among them.

It explains the proposal, not your changes: if you moved or excluded the flow by hand, the card still tells what had been proposed.

Editing the steps

Each step has its number, its name and these actions:

Action	What it does
Name	The text the customer reads next to the position. The info icon shows how it will read.
Move up / Move down	Moves the step. The numbers reorder on their own.
Merge into the previous step	Moves its flows into the step above, which keeps its own name. Use it to join two layers that are one stage for the customer.
Delete step	Removes the step and leaves its flows excluded.
Add step	Adds an empty step at the end.

Next to each flow there is a selector to move it to another step or choose Exclude from the journey. A flow lives in a single step: assigning it to one takes it out of wherever it was.

Below the steps there are two lists:

Assign them to a step: flows reached from the entry that are neither in a step nor excluded. While there is any, the journey is not shown (rule V6).
Excluded: the customer does not see the indicator on these flows, on purpose. If the proposal excluded them, each one says by which rule. Bring back returns it to the unassigned list so you can put it in a step.

On a journey that already has steps, Replace with the proposal swaps the steps, the mode and the excluded flows for those of the current proposal. The name, the switch and the funnel are left alone, and nothing sticks until you save.

Choosing the mode

Sequence: the customer sees which step they are on. Use it when the flows of one step are alternative paths.
Checklist: the customer sees how many items are done. Use it when the flows of a step all have to be done, like uploading several documents. Items are counted within the current step.

What each one looks like is in What the customer sees.

Preview

Pick a flow and the preview answers: what would a customer standing there see?

If they see something, the indicator, Step 3 of 7, with the step name.
If not, The customer sees no indicator here, with the reason: the journey is turned off, a rule is still failing, the flow is excluded on purpose, or it still has to go into a step. When the reason is that the journey is off or has a pending rule, it also says what they would see once unblocked.
Below, the raw data: mode, stored order, position, total steps, step name and completed.

The flows named by a failing rule or by a warning can be clicked in the panel, and they take you to that flow's preview.

In Checklist mode the preview counts the steps left behind, while the portal shows the position and the items of the current step. A name that only repeats the position is still shown by the preview and hidden by the portal. For these two cases, the reference is what the customer sees.

Saving, enabling and deleting

Save sends the whole journey, funnel included. On save, the system checks the rules again against the flows as they are at that moment and stores the result. Saving never fails because of a rule: an incomplete journey is saved anyway and is simply not shown. If saving fails for another reason, the error message appears on screen.
Enabled decides whether the journey is shown to the customer. It is stored with Save. A new journey starts turned off.
Delete removes the journey at once, without asking for confirmation, and it cannot be undone. Conversations in progress carry on; the next time a customer opens the entry flow, they no longer see the indicator.

Before turning a journey on, go through Rules and Status.

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