How to
Editing activated flows

Navigate Flows page in Workflow Studio
Navigate the Flows details page
Understanding the Flow Lifecycle

This article covers three ways to edit an active flow drafting a new flow version on top of an active flow, duplicating a flow and managing experiences via draining or terminating the old flow, and managing flow versions from the Flow details page.

Drafting a new flow version on top of an active flow

This method allows you to work on a new version of a flow, and activate it when ready. Note that experiences in the old versions will continue to run to completion in those versions.

1. Navigate to the Flows page and select the flow you wish to edit by clicking on the edit icon. This opens the Flow Builder page where you can start making your desired changes.
2. Edit, add, or remove nodes as needed. All of these changes are part of the new draft version on top of the active flow. The active version of the flow will continue to trigger and run experiences in the background while you're editing.
   • You can save your working draft at any time by clicking Save draft & exit. You can return to editing your draft at any time by clicking the edit icon on the flow in the flow list.
   • You can activate the new flow version by clicking Activate new version. This activates the flow immediately, and sets the existing active version to Draining status.

You can delete a working draft at any time from the flow details page for the respective flow; click on the 'Drafting' version in the version history tab, then go to More > Delete.

Duplicating and transitioning via draining or terminating

This approach allows for testing changes on a duplicate before affecting the active flow, providing a safety net for extensive modifications. If you want to stop the flow right away before making edits, you can set the flow to Drain or Terminate first, then duplicate when you are ready.

1. For an active flow, Pendula users can click on the Duplicate on the Flow details page. This will create a draft, duplicate version of the flow.
2. You now have the option to either Drain or Terminate the original flow:
   • Draining: Set the original flow to drain in the Flow details page before activating the new version, allowing ongoing experiences to conclude under the original configuration.
   • Terminated: End the original flow immediately by selecting Terminate in the Flow details page.
3. Make the necessary modifications and activate the new flow.

Managing flows from the Flow details page

This method ensures operational clarity by creating a new flow and then systematically terminating the old one.

1. Create a new flow by clicking the plus icon on Flows.
2. Once your new flow is configured and ready, navigate back to the Flows. Locate the older version you're replacing, and open its Flow details by clicking on the view icon.
3. On Flow details, click on More located at the top right corner. From the dropdown menu that appears, you can either choose to Drain or Terminate your flow.
   • Draining: Set the original flow to drain, allowing ongoing experiences to conclude under the original configuration.
   • Terminated: This immediately ends all experiences in the flow, wherever they are in the flow and allows the newly created flow to take full operational precedence.

What happens when someone is halfway through a previous flow version and a new flow version is activated?

By default, when a new flow version is activated, the previous flow version will go into a Draining state.

Consider this flow

1. A recipient triggers the flow by replying Gromit to the Pendula number. The Conversation node sends the recipient an SMS message expecting a reply.

   

2. At this point, the Pendula user goes into the flow and edits the Outbound SMS (thereby creating Flow version 2) by changing the last Outbound SMS node, from the message Flow version 1 to Flow Version 2.

   

3. The recipient replies yes after Flow version 2 has been activated. The recipient receives Flow Version 1 as the SMS reply from the Conversation node.

   Recipients who were already engaged in the flow will continue with the first version. This ensures that all ongoing experiences are allowed to continue under the initial flow configurations. This is known as the Draining state - where the original flow version gradually phases out.

   See Manage individual flows in various states to learn more about Draining state.

   Once the second version of the flow is activated, all new recipients that enter the flow will receive new messages. Users have the option to manually terminate older versions of the flow from Flow details; doing so will immediately discontinue experiences of all active recipients from the flow version 1.