This article only applies to your community if your Firstup contract includes this functionality. Please contact your Customer Success Manager with any questions about feature availability for your community.

Before You Start

This article assumes you are signed in to Creator Studio and have a role with permissions to create manage journeys. You will learn about the different journey start types and how to set them up. For detailed guidance on creating and managing journeys, refer to the articles below:

Journey Automation
Adding Journey Steps
Journey Management
Journey Member Visibility
Journey Reporting
Using Audience Attributes and Date Operators for Journey Automation
Journey Insights
Journey Use Cases

Looking for training on Journeys? Enroll in our eLearning course in the Training Center!

Starting a Journey

When creating a new journey, you are presented with a set of templates and a "Blank Canvas” option. The template list serves as examples to inspire and offer best-practice guidance for content creation, focusing on drip-style sequences—they are also a great way to get off the ground sprinting. Once you have selected the blank canvas or a template, name your journey and click the Start Journey step. 

Start Types

To initiate a journey, you must first select a start type. All users who meet your start criteria will be pulled into the journey. There are 3 journey start types: One-Time, Event, and Recurring. The start type you choose will depend on the goal of your journey. Once a journey has started, you cannot change the start type.

Note: If a user wants to create a journey that, for example, starts at 9 AM in both the US and UK, the user would need to either create two journeys and specify the time zones, or they can use split decisions with hour delays for different time zones.

Member Entry Frequency

For each journey start type, there are also two Member Entry Frequency options: Once and Every Time.

Once: Members can qualify for the journey only once. This means that only members who have not previously qualified, but meet the start step criteria, will be eligible to qualify.

Every Time: Members will re-enter the journey each time they re-qualify. However, they cannot re-qualify while they are actively progressing through a journey; they must first reach an End Journey step. This option is ideal for recurring journeys since it allows journeys to run continuously without manual intervention.

Note: Members can submit a poll or acknowledge something each time they receive the communication containing the poll or acknowledgement.

One-time Start

One-time drip sequences are journeys that begin at a specific time (timezone is based on the user who sets up the journey) and are sent to all employees who meet the defined audience criteria simultaneously. This type of journey will either run once immediately or once at the scheduled time. One-time journeys commonly include company-wide communications like benefits enrollment, annual surveys, holidays, and performance reviews. In this scenario, all users are included in the journey unless the creator applies audience filters. One-time journeys run once and never again.

Ex. In the following example, the journey will start immediately for both Brand Super Admins and Community Admins.

Note that when a One-Time start campaign is Active with Draft, only certain configurations are editable:

Event Start

Currently, two events can initiate a journey: receiving an Invitation to Firstup or signing up to Firstup. When either of these events happens, a user is placed in the journey. In this scenario, only individuals who undertake the specific event are included. And like with the one-time start type, the creator can apply filters to refine the audience.

Invitation to Firstup: For journeys that are published with this start type, when someone is invited to join your community on the Firstup platform, they will immediately be qualified for this journey and will enter at that time. Much like other start types, you can also apply additional audience criteria to the start step to filter down who you are targeting with the journey so that only people who meet certain criteria are entered into the journey when they are invited to Firstup.

Sign Up to Firstup: For journeys that are published with this start type, when someone who has been invited to join your community on the Firstup platform completes sign-up, they will immediately be qualified for this journey and will enter at that time. Much like other start types, you can also apply additional audience criteria to the start step to filter down who you are targeting with the journey so that only people who meet certain criteria are entered into the journey when they complete sign-up.

Ex. In the following example, the journey will start when a user is sent an invitation to Firstup.

Note that when an Event start campaign is Active with Draft, only certain configurations are editable:

Recurring Start

These automated sequences are triggered individually for each person based on a date field in their profile. This personalized timing caters to specific events in each individual's journey, like onboarding, promotions, offboarding, birthdays, work anniversaries, and similar occasions where start dates vary. With recurring starts, the audience is checked on the specified days and times to see if any of its members meet the criteria to start the journey. The daily run time is the time at which the journey will run every day. T

For instance, if a journey is scheduled at 3:00 PM CST to run at 8:00 AM CST, the first run will be the following day at 8:00 AM CST and then every day after that. Conversely, if a journey is scheduled at 3:00 PM CST to run at 3:30 PM CST, the first run will be the current day at 3:30 PM CST and then every day after that.

Much like One-Time starts, you can also apply additional audience criteria to the start step to filter down who you are targeting with the journey. Anyone who meets the criteria you set in the Filter Members section of the start step will qualify immediately when you publish it. Similarly, when the journey runs again, anyone who meets the criteria that day will qualify at that time. To allow users to qualify again for a recurring journey, you must select Every Time as the Member Entry Frequency. Once they are in an active journey, they can only re-qualify once they are in the End Journey step. For example, once a user completes a Birthday journey, they will re-qualify the next year again on their birthday.

Note: To learn how to create custom audiences for recurring starts, refer to Create an Advanced Custom Audience. Also, see Journeys - Audience Date Attributes and Operators.

Ex. In the following example, the journey will run for members of the Birthday Today audience every day at 8:30 AM CST.

Ex. In the following example, the journey will run for members of the People Leaders audience who are in the Product Department on the first Monday of every month at 2:00 PM EST.

Note that when a Recurring start campaign is Active with Draft, only certain configurations are editable: