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kelly
kelly
Helper ⭐️⭐️⭐️
June 15, 2018
New Idea

Ability to break the connections in Advanced Outreach

  • June 15, 2018
  • 14 replies
  • 194 views
It would be great if the Advanced Outreach canvas had the ability to delete a connection between two actions to insert additional steps, or, even better, if the actions were drag and drop. 

It's extremely redundant to build a 10 step outreach to realize you'd like to change from a wait step to a conditional wait step at say, the second step. Or if you want to add a CTA step between 6 and 7. Currently, you have to delete all steps following where you'd like to make the change, and with that, all of the settings of the deleted steps (like all details in a Create CTA action). Then you have to re-add the deleted steps. 

Instead, I'd like to be able to delete the link on either side of the action I want to change, and should be able to insert additional actions before or after any action.

      14 replies

      elizabeth_adams_c593ee
      elizabeth_adams_c593ee
      Helper ⭐️⭐️⭐️
      June 19, 2018
      Yes - this flexibility would be really critical.
      Elizabeth Panska
        jeffrey_coleman
        jeffrey_coleman
        Helper ⭐️
        June 19, 2018
        Adding that this would be equally valuable in Bionic Rules as well. I'm dreading going back to fix a 2-step rule to add in an additional query and filter because there are 8 actions that I'm going to need to delete and then recreate. Output from the rule will be identical.
          dan_ahrens
          dan_ahrens
          Expert ⭐️⭐️⭐️
          June 19, 2018
          Hi Jeff,

          Not sure if you noticed it or not, but we did enable you to make changes upstream in a Bionic Rule provided you don't delete data that is used by a downstream step (otherwise it would leave you with broken and orphaned actions). So in your example, you can definitely add in an additional query and/or filters as long as the main process flow of data isn't interrupted. 
          VP of Customer Success at Forcepoint
            abhishek_sivaraman
            abhishek_sivaraman
            Helper ⭐️⭐️⭐️
            June 20, 2018
            Hi,

            Thanks for sharing this use case. The way we are thinking about this is along the lines of visio/lucidhcart elements where you can insert,cut, copy, paste elements as part of the journey design.

            This is top of our list of journey design enhancements.

            Thanks
            Abhishek S
              jeffrey_coleman
              jeffrey_coleman
              Helper ⭐️
              June 22, 2018
              Hey Dan -- thanks for flagging that! I hadn't noticed! That will definitely come in handy!

              In this case my challenge is that I need to insert a step into the rule setup, and I don't see how to do that. What I have currently is:
              1. Get activity data
              2. Aggregate data by account
              What I now want to do (having run it for a few weeks in real life!) is:
              1. Get activity data
              2. Get account data
              3. Merge that data to remove inactive values
              4. Aggregate data by account
              The final data set is the same in terms of data structure, it just has fewer rows.
              dan_ahrens
              dan_ahrens
              Expert ⭐️⭐️⭐️
              June 22, 2018
              Looking at your example, if I understand it correctly you'd like to keep 1, insert 2&3 and then repoint Aggregate data by account to the output of 3 instead of the output of 1. Is that right?

              So, once you select a data source for a rule task and save it, you can't change that data source. But, in your example if you wanted to add a step to filter out inactive accounts, could you keep steps 1 & 2 from your original task as is and just add steps 2 & 3 from your second example to the end? In other words, aggregate the data first and then filter out inactive values?
              VP of Customer Success at Forcepoint
              angelahibdon
              angelahibdon
              Contributor ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
              September 20, 2018
              I am struggling with the same functionality in the Advanced Outreach/Program creation. We have had several changes to our process while creating it and can't easily change the program without deleting several steps or starting over. It's caused us a lot of time and missed deadlines in rolling out our NPS program and other programs. 
              Angela Hibdon
                kelly
                kellyAuthor
                Helper ⭐️⭐️⭐️
                December 6, 2018
                Abhishek - will this include the ability to move the connection lines independently? It's very difficult that the Program attempts to map the process for me by forcing the selection of next steps.

                If we had a tray of tasks we could drag/drop what we want onto the canvas and connect exit/entry points of actions ourselves. It would eliminate unnecessary steps and provide a ton more flexibility.

                For example, 'Continue' after a conditional wait step automatically re-enters the contact into the flow at a set point, but what if I don't want those participants to re-enter the flow until much farther down stream? This is not possible.

                kelly
                kellyAuthor
                Helper ⭐️⭐️⭐️
                July 30, 2020

                This is incorrectly flagged as having a workaround. A different issue was raised in the comments with a workaround provided, the workaround is unrelated to the original posting. @sai_ram 

                  kelly
                  kellyAuthor
                  Helper ⭐️⭐️⭐️
                  January 4, 2021

                  @sai_ram please see previous comment, workaround provided is an incorrect status applied to this topic.

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