Managing the order of your Workflows

Reorder and prioritize the trigger queue of your Workflows to create the best customer experience.

Written By Markus from Featurebase

Last updated 3 months ago

Overview

Workflows run in sequential order - from top to bottom. You can easily reorder them by dragging and dropping in the list. Reordering lets you control which workflows take priority and update your customer experience accordingly.

Customer-facing vs background Workflows

When reordering Workflows, it’s important to understand the difference between customer-facing and background Workflows, as this affects how they behave.

Customer-facing Workflows

Customer-facing Workflows include anything the customer can see or interact with, such as:

  • Reply buttons

  • Messages

Customers only experience the first customer-facing Workflow they match.
If multiple workflows could apply, only the top one in your list will run.

Background Workflows

Background (or internal) Workflows contain only actions customers don’t see or interact with, such as tagging, assigning, or applying SLAs.

Customers can match multiple background Workflows at the same time. All matched background workflows will run in parallel.

There’s no guarantee which Background Workflow (e.g. top or bottom) will apply its actions first - for example, assignments.

Best practice:

  • Limit the number of competing background workflows running at once

  • Move actions like assignment into customer-facing Workflows to ensure they trigger consistently

How both Workflow types interact

  1. Customers only experience the first customer-facing Workflow they match

  2. But they can match multiple background Workflows

This means visible messages will come from only one Workflow, while background automations (like tagging or routing) can still run simultaneously.

Customer context in Workflows

For both background and customer-facing Workflows, it's important to understand who the Workflow applies to:

  • When a Workflow is matched, it always applies to the earliest remaining customer in the conversation. Initially, this is the customer who started the conversation

  • If customers are added to or removed from the conversation, the Workflow will always apply to the earliest remaining customer

  • All actions, conditions, and matching criteria in the Workflow are based on the earliest remaining customer's attributes and behavior

Example: If three customers are part of a conversation (Customer 1, 2, and 3), all Workflow actions apply to Customer 1 until they are removed. Once Customer 1 leaves, the Workflow will apply to Customer 2, and so on.