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Campaign workflow builder

Our visual workflow builder helps you construct message and action sequences on an open canvas. After you create a campaign, you’ll land on the workflow builder.

1. Campaign settings: edit the name, goal, exit conditions, and message settings.
2. Build menu: drag and drop message and action blocks onto the canvas to create your workflow.
3. Canvas: drag blocks here to add them to your workflow. The canvas flows top to bottom.
4. Builder features: open/close the build menu, zoom in or out, add a sticky note for your teammates, export an image of your workflow, or review keyboard shortcuts. After you click a block, this menu expands to show Copy, Copy to, Move and Delete actions, too.

How to use the builder

To add a block to your workflow, drag an item from the sidebar onto the canvas. The canvas shows you where you can drop a workflow block with the indicator.

Moving the canvas

If your workflow stretches beyond the margins of your browser, you can scroll around the canvas.

You can hold spacebar and move your mouse to scroll around the canvas as well.

Select items on the canvas

Click a workflow item to configure it.

Hold shift and click workflow blocks to select them for Move, Delete or Copy operations. You can also click and drag to select multiple workflow blocks. Selecting a branch this way also selects all of the items in the branch.

Moving items

To move a block in your workflow, simply drag it anywhere you see a indicator.

Click and drag to select multiple items. You can either drag items to a new spot in the workflow or click Move and select where you want to drop them.

If you want to move items to a spot in your workflow that doesn’t fit on your screen, just drag the item to the edge of the canvas, and the workflow will scroll.

Keyboard shortcuts

The workflow builder supports a few keyboard shortcuts to help you complete some repetitive actions quickly and easily. You can review them within your campaign by clicking the lightbulb icon on the bottom menu.

Sticky notes

As workflows become increasingly complex, you may want to leave notes for yourself and other team members to help explain workflow logic, actions, delays, etc.

To leave notes, drag sticky notes from the bottom menu onto your workflow. Click a note to add or edit the text. You can drag notes around the workflow to place them exactly where you want them.

Each note indicates who created it and when. Click the close icon to delete a note.

Hover over a note and click the color drop icon to change its color. You might color coordinate notes written by different members of your team or differentiate between informational notes and warnings.

Configuring workflow items

After you drag a block into the workflow, click it to configure it—set a delay timer or add content to a message.

Messages and data blocks that you haven’t configured are marked: 'You still have work to do'.

Messages

For each message block—Email, Push, Slack, Twilio SMS—you can:

• Edit the item’s name: this is not a subject line, just a shorthand name for the workflow item that will appear in the workflow builder.
• Click to add content.
• Turn it into an A/B test.
• Edit sending behaviour: whether it queues as a draft, sends automatically, or doesn’t send at all.
• Edit unsubscribe behaviour: by default, these will not send to unsubscribed. Please be careful with this setting!
• Add action conditions, in case you’d like the item to be skipped.
• Track links. (Emails only)
• Choose a specific platform. (Push notifications only)

If you’ve added content to a message, you’ll be able to get a preview of it. Here’s a screenshot:

Data blocks

With data blocks, you can update people, send events, query collections, and create webhooks. Editing a Send and receive data block (a webhook) is similar to editing a message block. For each data block, you can:

• Set the block name
• Add details or add a request
• (Send and receive data blocks only) manage sending behaviour (queue drafts, send automatically, don’t send)
• Set action conditions.

Delays

There are three types of delays you can add to your campaign workflows: Time Delays, Time Windows, and Wait Until…. After you add a delay to the workflow, you can click it to edit the following:

• Time Delay: edit how long the delay is and add an action condition.
• Time Window: configure the window’s day and specific time.
• Wait Until…: add the condition that needs to be met and/or a maximum wait time.

You can add an action condition to any delay.

Flow control

Branches let you send people down different paths in your workflow depending on various conditions. You can split people into a true/false branch, multi-split branch, or random cohort branch, depending on the types of conditions you want to apply.

After you add a branch to your workflow, click it to define conditions for the branch.

• True/false branch: edit the name of the branch and the conditions determining whether people go down the true or false path.
• Multi-split branch: edit the name of the branch, choose the data type you want to split paths on, and then pick the values of that data type for each path.
• Random cohort branch: you won’t add conditions. Rather, specify the number of paths and what percentage of people should move down each.
• Exit: Reconnect the branch’s exit block to another path in the branch.

Export your workflow as an image

Click the image icon  at the bottom to export your workflow as an image. This action downloads a PNG to your computer - you won’t receive an email notification - which you can share with teammates or other stakeholders that don’t have access to Customer.io.

Copying workflow items

You can copy items to/from campaigns in any of your workspaces when you want to re-use specific sequences of actions, their conditions, and content.

You can also duplicate campaigns to re-use not only an entire workflow, but also campaign settings like trigger conditions and goal and exit criteria.

You cannot, however, copy campaigns across accounts.