Publishing and Validation
Save, Publish and Unpublish, the one-live-workflow rule, what publishing checks, and what happens to patients already inside
A saved design is a draft; a published design is the live workflow. Publishing compiles the design, checks it, and makes it the one workflow your account runs. This page explains the three buttons, the checks, and the effect on patients who are already moving.
The Three Buttons
Button | When it shows | What it does |
|---|---|---|
Save | Always | Stores the canvas as the draft and confirms "Workflow saved successfully". On a published workflow it asks "Are you sure you want to save and publish the bot?" and, on Save And Publish, stores the draft and publishes it in one step |
Publish | On a draft | Compiles the saved draft and makes it live. It does not save first, so press Save before Publish or your latest edits are not included |
Unpublish | On the published workflow | Takes the workflow offline and confirms "Workflow Unpublished!!" |
All three refuse with "Please select a start node" while the canvas has no start node.
One Live Workflow per Account
Your account runs one workflow at a time. Publishing a workflow unpublishes every other workflow on the account first; the list then shows the new one as Published and the previous one as Draft.
What that means for patients:
- Patients already inside the previous workflow keep moving through it; unpublishing does not stop, move or close them.
- Their stages no longer appear as tabs on the board, because the board shows the stages of the published workflow only. To see and work them again, publish that workflow again.
- New patients enter the newly published workflow.
Plan a switch: finish or move the patients of the old workflow before publishing a different one, or keep changes inside one workflow.
What Publishing Checks
Publishing reads the whole design and refuses it with "Workflow validation failed, cannot publish" when it finds any of these:
Refusal | Meaning | Fix |
|---|---|---|
A connection points at a node that does not exist | An output leads to a node that was deleted | Delete the dangling connection or draw it to a node |
A loop between stage outputs | A call outcome or form condition leads, directly or through other stages, back to the stage it started from | Break the loop; model repeated calls with Retry After rows inside the stage |
Update Tags with no tags or no action | The node was saved empty | Pick Add Tags or Remove Tags and at least one tag |
Update Attribute with no attribute | The node was saved empty | Pick an attribute |
Time Delay with no delay, or a negative one | The node was saved empty | Enter a delay |
A refusal leaves the design as it is on the canvas; fix the node and publish again.
Publishing a Changed Design
Publishing again after edits raises the workflow's version and does not restart anyone:
- Patients keep their current stage and tasks.
- A stage you renamed shows its new name on the board and in Previous stages.
- Assignment rules, due times, tasks and call actions apply to patients who enter a stage after the publish; a patient already in the stage keeps what they were given on entry.
- A new stage receives patients only through the outputs that lead to it.
Unpublishing
Unpublish takes the workflow offline. Patients inside it keep moving, but their stages leave the board until a workflow with those stages is published again. Use it when you want no workflow running, for example while rebuilding the design from scratch; for a simple edit, save and publish instead.
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