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Pause a flow

Stop a live flow from starting for new chats without unpublishing it, choose what happens to conversations already in it, and resume it later.

Pausing a flow stops it from starting for new chats while keeping its live version, its triggers and its place on each number. Resume it and it answers again from the next message. Unpublishing, by contrast, takes the live version away.

Pause a flow

  1. Open the flow and click Pause beside its live status (the banner that says which version is live), or choose Pause… from the flow's row in Automation.
  2. Read the dialog: while the flow is paused, new chats don't start it. A message that would have started it goes to the next flow that matches on the number, or gets no automatic reply.
  3. If conversations are in the flow right now, tick Also stop the N conversations in it now to end them as well. Left unticked, they finish the flow as they would have.
  4. Click Pause flow.

The flow shows Paused beside its status, in the flow list and in the builder, and the builder has a banner with Resume. Pausing and resuming need permission to publish flows.

What changes while a flow is paused

  • Its triggers don't fire. Keywords, new chats, schedules and other triggers start nothing.
  • Its slots are skipped. If the flow is a number's Welcome, Default or Out-of-hours flow, the Numbers page marks the slot Paused — the next rung answers and warns about it. A paused Welcome flow falls through to Default; a paused Out-of-hours flow falls through to the flows that answer in opening hours.
  • Try a message says when a paused flow would otherwise have answered.
  • You can't start it by hand or hand a chat to it. Assign to flow says it's paused.
  • Publishing a new version keeps it paused. Unpublishing clears the pause.

Resume a flow

Click Resume in the banner, or choose Resume from the flow's row. New chats start it again from now on. Messages that arrived while it was paused are not replayed.

When you publish again

If conversations are still in an earlier version, the publish review shows how many, by version, for example "3 runs are in progress (2 on version 3, 1 on version 2)". They finish on the version they started on; only new runs use the new one. See Test and publish a flow.

Still need help?

Write to us at [email protected] and tell us what you were trying to do. Already a customer? Sign in to IconEngage — the same articles are under Help in the app.