Help · Automations
Draft, Manual and Live
Every step carries a setting that decides whether anybody gets it: Draft, Manual or Live. It is how you add something to a running automation safely, and how your team sees who an email is about to reach before it goes.
Draft and live, twice over
A step is draft or live. A message — an email or a text — has a third setting, Manual. Every step's panel sets it with a row of small colored buttons: Draft, Manual and Live for an email or a text, Draft and Live for everything else. The same word sits on the step's card on the map.
A draft message is skipped and everything else carries on, which is how you add a new email to something that is already running without anybody receiving it before you are ready:
Nobody is sent this step. Everything else in the automation still runs.
New steps arrive as drafts for exactly that reason. A draft that is not a message is skipped too — a draft wait does not wait, and a draft split sends nobody down any path:
A draft step is skipped. Everything else in the automation still runs.
A live message goes to everyone who reaches it:
Everyone who reaches this step is sent it.
And a manual message holds everyone who reaches it until someone on your team sends it — see Manual messages below:
People wait here until you send it.
Enabling a message is something a marketer, manager or owner does — and setting one to Manual counts as enabling it. A viewer can read an automation and change none of it. Everyone else can build a message, write its email and apply changes — and applying changes with a message that is on, or enabling one that was a draft, is the act that starts mail going through it, so it asks for the same permission as enabling the automation:
Enabling a message is something a marketer, manager or owner does. Ask one of them to apply these changes, or leave the message a draft and apply the rest.
A wait, a split, a list step or a property step is not a message. None of them reaches anybody, so enabling one asks nothing beyond being able to edit the automation at all. The messages ask — an email, a text and a team alert, which goes out unattended like the other two.
And nobody at Carpe Messaging can enable a message for you, whichever role we are looking through while we help. We can write it and leave it a draft; the press is yours.
Nor can we apply changes to an automation that has been enabled. While we are helping, we can build an automation you have not started yet and apply its changes for you — that sends nothing, because nobody is inside it. Once an automation has been enabled, applying changes alters mail that is already on its way to people, and that press is yours as well.
Disabling a message never asks: stopping mail is never harder than starting it.
The automation is Enabled, Disabled or Not applied yet. Only an enabled automation takes anybody in at all:
Nobody enters an automation that is not enabled.
Applying changes does not enable anything by itself, so an automation whose changes you have just applied reads Disabled unless you ticked Enable after applying. That is the whole difference between the two words: Not applied yet means there is nothing to run, Disabled means there is and it is not running.
Disabling stops everybody where they are. Nothing is lost, and enabling it again picks them up:
Nobody will be emailed until the automation is enabled again. After that, overdue steps can take up to an hour.
Setting every message at once
Set every message to… in the automation’s ⋯ menu sets every email and text in the automation to Draft, Manual or Live in one go:
Every email and text in this automation is set to the status you choose. Nothing changes for anybody until you apply changes.
It is an edit to your working copy like any other: it is saved as you go, one Undo takes it back, and nothing reaches anybody until you apply changes. Steps marked To set up after an import are passed over. While text messages are off for your store, choosing Manual or Live leaves every text step as it is, because a text cannot be Manual or Live until they are on, and the dialog says how many it left. Applying the result still asks for the same permission as enabling a message by hand.
Manual messages
A message set to Manual is a checkpoint. Everyone who reaches it stops there and waits, and nothing is sent to them until someone on your team looks and decides. Use it when you want to see who an email is about to reach before it goes — the first week of a new win-back email, say, or a message that offers a discount.
Where they wait. The automation's own page lists every Manual message with people waiting at it, and how long the oldest has waited:
People wait at these messages until someone on your team releases or skips them.
Open one and you see what they would be sent — the email exactly as it was when changes were last applied, or the text's own words — and who is waiting and since when.
Release sends it to them. Choose some people and press Release, or press Release everyone at the top. They are not sent it by the press itself — they go back into the automation, which sends it to them on its next pass, one by one, the way it sends every message:
They are sent it on the automation’s next pass, one by one, within your sending hours and the Frequency limit — anyone who no longer qualifies, has unsubscribed or cannot be emailed is not sent it. Nobody is sent it twice.
For a text, the sentence says they are texted it.
You release the email you are looking at. If applying changes alters that email while the page is open, nobody is moved; the page says so and shows the new email, and you press again once you have seen it. If you release people and applied changes alter the email before they are sent it, they go back to waiting, so nobody is sent an email nobody on your team released — unless those changes also set the message to Live, which sends it to everyone who reaches it. Release waits until the email has appeared on the page.
So releasing somebody never gets round anything: consent, unsubscribes, the automation's own rule about who stays in, a message's send filter, your quiet hours and the Frequency limit all still decide, exactly as they would for a live message. Release someone while the automation is disabled and they are sent it when the automation is enabled again.
Skip moves them on without it. They are not sent that message and carry on to whatever follows it in the automation — the next wait, the next email — or finish, if it was the last step:
They are not sent this message. They carry on to whatever follows it in the automation.
A wait after a Manual message counts from when you release them, not from when they arrived. Somebody who waited a week and is then released still gets the two-day gap you drew before the next email.
Who can release or skip. A marketer, a manager or an owner — the people who can enable a message. A viewer can see who is waiting and change nothing. Nobody at Carpe Messaging can release or skip anybody for you, whichever role we are looking through while we help.
Changing a Manual message while people are waiting
- Manual to Draft — the people waiting move on without it, as a draft message would have skipped them.
- Manual to Live — the people already waiting stay waiting. Live is about who reaches the message from now on; the people already there are released by you, by name or all at once. The Apply dialog tells you how many.
- Removing the message — the people waiting there stay put, and the automation's page still shows them. They can no longer be sent a message you deleted, so the only thing to do is skip them on to what follows.
The Apply dialog says which of these your changes will do, before you press it.
Being told when people start waiting
Out of the box, people wait at a Manual message until somebody opens the automation and sees them. If you would rather be told, a manager or owner can enable Email the team when people start waiting at a Manual message in Settings → Store. It is off until you enable it.
When it is on, the moment somebody starts waiting at a Manual message that had nobody waiting, everyone on your team who can release them gets one email with a link to the people waiting. It is one email per queue, never one per person: nobody is emailed again about that message until everyone waiting there has been released or skipped.
Enabling it does not email you about queues that are already there. A Manual message whose queue starts after you enable it gets an email. One that already has people waiting when you enable it gets none until everyone waiting there has been released or skipped; the next person to arrive after that starts a new queue, and your team is emailed. Anybody already waiting is on the automation's page, as before.