Terms Reference
Action – An action is a core component within a flow, representing a single executable step. Common examples include ‘Send a Message’, ‘Update a Contact’, or ‘Enter Another Flow’.
Administrator Role – A user with the administrator role possesses full administrative rights over a workspace. This includes the ability to modify settings, manage user logins, and access or edit all content such as flows, campaigns, contacts, and messages.
Campaign & Campaign Event – A campaign is a tool for scheduling messages and workflows relative to a specific contact date, like their creation date or the day they joined a group. A campaign event is the individual message or flow triggered at a designated time within that campaign.
Channel – A channel is a connection that enables your workspace to send and receive messages or phone calls. Supported channel types include SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Telegram. You can integrate multiple channels of the same or different types.
Classifier – A classifier is used to parse and interpret unstructured text within a flow, enabling the extraction of specific, relevant data points.
Contact – A contact is any end-user who has communicated or is scheduled to communicate with your services.
Contact Field – Contact fields are customizable attributes assigned to a contact to store values such as name, phone number, or any other personalized information.
Dashboard – The dashboard provides a visual summary of your message activity, offering insights into inbound and outbound traffic across weekly, monthly, yearly, or custom timeframes.
Editor Role – Users with the editor role can modify flows, campaigns, triggers, and contacts; they can also send messages, initiate flows, and export or import data. Editors cannot adjust fundamental account settings, manage user roles, or add/remove channels.
Expression – Expressions are used to dynamically customize messages by performing calculations or utilizing built-in functions for tasks like date formatting and complex data handling.
Flow – A flow is a visual workflow that applies conditional logic to contacts from the moment they enter it.
Flow Editor – The flow editor is the interactive interface where you design and modify your flows. Access it by navigating to the ‘Flows’ tab and selecting a specific flow.
Flow Event – A flow event can be created to allow external services (e.g., Zapier) to subscribe to specific occurrences within a flow, triggering external integrations when those events happen.
Global Variable – A global variable is a value shared across an entire account, simplifying the reference to commonly used information.
Label – Labels are organizational tags that can be applied to flows, messages and contact responses to improve data management within the workspace.
Logs – Logs provide detailed records of account activity. This includes channel-specific message and call history, flow start logs (showing when a flow was triggered and by whom), and individual contact message histories.
Login – A login represents a unique user account within your workspace.
Node – A node is an individual step within a flow, which can be either an action or a router that splits the path.
Node Exits – Node exits are the potential paths a contact can follow from a node, visualized as dots. A red dot indicates an exit path that will remove the contact from the flow.
Outbox – The outbox is a holding area for messages that encounter channel errors. These messages are queued here until they can be successfully sent.
Parent & Child Flows – Using the ‘Enter Another Flow‘ action starts a child flow from within a parent flow. The contact will proceed through the child flow before returning to continue in the parent flow.
Parent & Child Variables – In a child flow, @parent can reference result fields collected in the parent flow (e.g., @parent.field). Conversely, @child can be used in the parent flow to reference data collected by the child flow up to the point the contact exited it.
Results – Results provide comprehensive analytics for a flow, including message metrics, run data, and a complete overview of all activity from start to finish.
Run – A run encapsulates a contact’s complete journey through a flow, from entry to exit, including all intermediate actions. A run ends when the flow is completed, another flow is entered, or the contact expires due to inactivity.
Start a Flow – A flow can be initiated (started) manually from the editor, via a keyword trigger, on a schedule, as part of a campaign, or after an inbound call.
Surveyor Role – The surveyor role has no administrative access to the workspace and may only submit flow results using the dedicated offline data collection mobile apps.
Ticketing Service – Integrating a ticketing service (e.g., Email or Zendesk) allows you to seamlessly escalate conversations from automated flows to human agents.
Trigger – A trigger defines the event that initiates a flow, such as a keyword, a received call, an unhandled message, a conversation start, a Facebook referral, or a scheduled time. Triggers can also add contacts to groups.
URN – A URN (Uniform Resource Name) is a unique address for a contact, such as a phone number or email address. A single contact can possess multiple URNs.
Variable – Variables are placeholders that reference dynamic values like @contact.first_name or @urns.mailto. These can include contact properties, URNs, flow results, data from external services like Zapier or a webhook, and global account variables. A full reference is available in our guide.
Viewer Role – A viewer can observe all aspects of the account but lacks permission to edit any element, including flows and contacts, or to send messages.
Workspace – Your workspace is your primary account environment, which can contain multiple child workspaces. It serves as the central hub for managing your flows, contacts, and messages.
Ticketing – The ticketing feature streamlines the process of escalating contacts from automated flows to human agents. It allows your team to assign, respond to, and resolve support tickets directly within the workspace.