Flows and Rules

What it is

In Flows and Rules the sale is built in stages. Each card is a moment of the sale, such as the greeting, the catalog or checkout, with its goal and its instructions, and the arrows say when it moves from one to the next. What only applies at one moment of the conversation goes in its stage. The first message is built in the Greeting stage, under Greeting messages: text, photos, files, catalogs and links, sent in the order you put them.

A flow is a conversation split into stages. Each stage has a single goal, like taking the order or collecting payment; it gets the data it needs, like the product, the address or the payment method; and its route carries the condition that says that stretch is done. Without conditions there is no flow, just a list of topics, and the seller asks for data before it knows what for.

The base flow

Almost every business fits the same chain: Greeting, Advisory, Catalog, Delivery/shipping, Cart & Checkout, Confirmation and Farewell. The Sales journey already includes all of them, Advisory too. Two routes leave the Greeting, each with its condition: to Advisory if the customer mentions no product or does not know what they want, and to Catalog if they already mention one or come from an ad. Each stage answers a customer question; if you cannot write which one, that stage is not needed. The Farewell is the exception: it only closes.

What a stage has

Each stage in Flows and Rules has a Goal (what your seller must achieve at that moment), its Steps (what it does, in order) and its Additional instructions (your notes for that stage, which always apply). It can add Data it asks the customer for, such as the address (required ones keep it in the stage until it has them), Media it can send and Automatic rules. With Available from any point, the customer can jump to that stage from any moment of the conversation, when the condition you write is met.

Restore the original, in a stage's inspector, puts that stage's instructions back to their original text.

Prebuilt blocks

Prebuilt blocks are ready-made stages: Greeting, Catalog, Cart, Checkout, Cart & Checkout, Delivery/shipping, Confirmation, Upsell and Farewell. Each one appears only once on the canvas, and a Custom journey is a stage you build from scratch. If the canvas is empty, you can start from Sales journey (the full path), FAQ + human (answers questions and hands over) or Empty custom.

Routes

The arrows between stages are routes, and the condition written on each one is what makes your seller move to the next stage. When does this route fire? offers: When the agent finishes the stage's instructions, When certain conditions are met (data completed, a tool used or a data value) or The seller decides based on the conversation. With Allow going back, the customer can also return to the previous stage, when they ask or when what you wrote is met.

The seller only moves to another stage when the customer writes: there is no timer or setting that sends the next stage if the customer does not reply. If the customer has to get something without writing again, put it in the same stage.

Automatic rules

An Automatic rule says what your seller does right away when something happens in a stage: When (what happens, for example «the customer asks for a product for a specific use») and Then: Send product, Send by category or Other, a free instruction where you can mention products or categories with @. Each stage has up to 5 rules.

Media and links

A stage's Media are the images, videos, audio or PDFs your seller can send while that stage is active, up to 10 per stage. Each file has a Description (what it is) and When should it be sent? (up to 200 characters), which your seller uses to pick the moment.

A stage's media is sent while that stage is active, when what you wrote in When should it be sent? is met. Product variant photos are sent when the customer asks about products, mostly in the Catalog stage, which comes after the Greeting.

If you write a link in a Flows and Rules stage or in an adapted greeting (for example, your WhatsApp group, your catalog or a pickup-point finder), your seller sends it to the customer complete and exactly as you wrote it. Your seller chooses when in the conversation to send it.

System stages

The Greeting and the handoff to a person are system stages. In the Greeting you set the first message and where it goes next, and there is only one per seller. In the handoff you only set when it triggers and where it ends: your seller runs the handoff and that stage has no rules, data or actions to edit.

The canvas

The canvas shows each stage as a card that says its type, whether it can be reached from any flow and whether it is off, and each route's condition is always shown on the arrow. A stage has Duplicate, Disable (it stays on the canvas but your seller does not use it) and Delete, and a Note is a comment of yours on the canvas. Tidy up arranges the cards.

Analyze before publishing

Analyze checks your flows before you publish and shows the Assistant analysis: routes without a condition, missing data, stages that cannot be reached and rules that contradict each other, each with a suggestion. It can take up to 30 seconds. Errors keep you from publishing; warnings do not block it.

Yago as copilot

In Flows and Rules, if you see it in your account, Yago sits next to the flow as Copilot: you ask for the change in your own words, it proposes it and what you approve goes to the draft. The modes are Copilot (Yago and the flow together), Chat and Flow. Your rules as text shows Your seller, in words: everything it does, stage by stage, with your instructions, and Copy for your AI copies it. On a phone the flow is read-only; to build it, open it on a computer.

What Yago does →

How to build a good flow

New stage or step?

Before creating a stage, ask whether it is not a step inside one you already have. A new stage is only justified if it changes the goal of the conversation, collects its own data and leads to more than one destination. If any of the three answers is no, it is a step or an additional instruction in the stage that already exists. Every extra stage adds a route to give a condition, a condition that can stay vague, one more place to look if the seller gets stuck and one more point where the customer can drop off before paying.

Steps, instructions and data

Steps are written as steps: numbered, in order, and each one happens once at a specific moment. Additional instructions have no order and apply the whole time the customer is in the stage. The test: if the sentence has a “before” or an “after”, it is a step; if it starts with “always” or “never”, it goes in Additional instructions. A required piece of data keeps the customer in the stage until it is collected: mark it only if the next step is impossible without it, like the address to quote shipping.

What stays out of the flow

A stage holds behavior: what your seller recommends, what it asks and how it says it. Each zone's costs, timeframes and payment method go in Shipping & timing; account numbers and payment instructions, in Payment methods; and each product's price and details, in Products. If you write them in the Steps, they live in two places: you change the price in Products and your seller keeps quoting the old one.

Clear conditions

Write each condition as if you were explaining it to someone who has not seen the conversation: “if the customer wants to buy” is vague, because they want to buy from the first message; “only if they already chose a product and quantity and have not given their address yet” can be checked. When you already have the data, When certain conditions are met is the safest option. If a stage can end three ways, that is three routes with three conditions, never two conditions on one route. Available from any point belongs where the customer must be able to arrive at any time, almost always the Catalog; on every stage, the flow stops being a flow. Allow going back helps in Delivery and Checkout, to fix the address or the quantity without restarting the conversation.

Branch and close again

A flow opens in the middle and closes again at the end: if you branch, for example one Advisory stage per product line, every path reaches the same Catalog, the same Delivery, the same Checkout and the same Confirmation. Greeting, Catalog, Cart & Checkout and Farewell are prebuilt blocks that exist only once. What to recommend based on what the customer says is an instruction in the Advisory stage, not a branch. And if the ending changes by zone, like cash on delivery in the capital and prepayment elsewhere, that is set in Shipping & timing, not with a second checkout.

Testing and publishing

What you change in your seller is saved as a draft. While you see You have unpublished changes, your customers keep getting the previous version: the changes reach them when you publish with Publish, except FAQs, which apply right away. Discard changes replaces the draft with the last published version, and it cannot be undone.

Before you publish