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 steps in a journey. For detailed guidance on creating and managing journeys, refer to the articles below:

Journey Automation
Starting a Journey
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!

Adding Steps

Once you have selected your start type and defined your audience, you can add additional steps to your journey by clicking the plus sign between the default steps. 

Note: The Start Journey and End Journey steps are part of every journey and cannot be deleted; however, the steps in between can be edited and deleted.

Steps

Journey steps include start, communication, decision, delay, and end. There is no limit on the number of steps that can be added to a journey.

Start

The start step is the initial step of the journey where the start trigger and audience defines the beginning of the journey.

Communication

In the communication steps of your journey, you can create a content from scratch or add content from existing campaigns directly into the journey framework. In addition to campaigns, all templates from the template library are also available to add to a journey. All campaigns visible on the Campaigns page, including published, scheduled, draft, and archived, are available to add to a journey. The search and filter functionalities for campaigns within journeys mirror those available on the Campaigns page.

Click Create New to create content from scratch. New content creation will mirror the same design flow as a regular campaign, including preview options for each channel. Since only content is pulled into a journey, Deliver settings will not be available; however, you will be able to select an author for the content.

If existing campaign content is added to a communication step, it becomes independent of the original campaign. Only the design elements are copied; specific campaign or template details are not transferred. You can customize the email alias, subject, and preview text directly within the journey communication step. Any updates or actions made to the original campaign will not affect the journey communication.

Note: Since only the content from existing campaigns is pulled into the journey, settings from the Deliver page of the campaign or template are ignored, as the journey defines its own audience and schedule.

You can modify communication content directly within the communication step by clicking Edit or you can choose to Replace the current communication with brand-new content, an existing campaign, or a template.

Analytics for the journey communication will be available at the journey level through the Engagement or Members view.

Each member who interacts with the journey communication will receive a personalized version of the message. This differs from campaigns, where content is typically shared among multiple users. Journey messages are designed for one-to-one communication.

When inserting content, you can search by name or refine your search based on status, initiative, author, creator, and other criteria to find the relevant campaigns or templates.

Once a campaign or template has been added and content has been finalized, select the Ready for Publish checkbox under the Configure tab. A journey cannot be published without the checkbox selected for each communication. If any changes are made to the communication post-publication, the checkbox will have to be checked again before publishing the updated journey.

The Configure tab is also where you will select which channels you want members to be reached at: Email, Notification Center, or Push. You can edit the email alias, subject line, and preview text for that communication only. Refer to Notifications for more details on customizing these fields.

Note: Notification Center must be selected in order to utilize Push.

Under Channel Delivery, selecting Optimize which channels to leverage will allow the system to determine the best channel to reach audience members based on their user behavior. You also have the option to send a communication to each selected channel.

Click the Preview tab to preview how your communication will appear in email.

Decision

Decision steps are a great way to direct different audiences down tailored paths within a similar journey. For example, you can create distinct onboarding tracks for managers and individual contributors, all seamlessly managed within a single journey. Use the decision step to send different audiences down their own track within the journey or to end the journey for one or some audiences. Decision steps can be added, reordered, configured, and deleted.

Decision steps can be added anywhere in a journey. There are no limits to the number of decisions you can have in a journey, nor are there limits on the number of splits you can have within a single decision step. Splits are mutually exclusive. You will only qualify for the first split in any single split decision guaranteeing that you do not end up going down two paths in the same journey.

Note: While there is no limit to the number of branches that can be added to a decision step, a large number of branches can be difficult to work with.

When splitting the audience, you can decide which communications to send to each audience. You can also split the audiences further or choose to end the journey for one or more audiences. 

Note: Order matters! If a member is included in the first split, they won’t be considered for the second.

Delay

Delays determine how long you want to wait before the journey proceeds to the next step or the end of a journey. Delay steps can be added, reordered, configured, and deleted delay.

Delay steps are generally inserted between communication steps as "holding periods." You can specify the number of hours or days a member should wait before proceeding through the journey. This level of detail lets you schedule actions with precision. For example, you can set up a message to be sent first thing in the morning when someone starts their job, and another message at the end of their first day to check in with them.

Note: We recommend placing a delay step between communication steps unless you want communications to piggyback immediately.

End

A member reaches the end step once they have completed the journey or if their journey has ended by way of a decision step.

Error Handling

The system runs validation when publication is attempted, and any errors must be fixed before the journey can be published.