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Event triggered flow is only triggering once.

  • September 23, 2024
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Hi,

We want to be able to trigger a flow whenever a custom event happens.

The very first time the event takes place, we can see the target profile added to the flow. After repeated triggers -using the API, the profile is not added again into the flow.

I’m sending some profile properties and I can see them being updated with the event API call but the profile isn’t added to the flow. The fact that the properties are updated makes think the call is properly formatted and working well.

I have a few questions:
1. The flow has a couple of branches and each of them takes multiple weeks to be completed. If a profile is already going through the motions on one of the flow branches, can it be added anew to the flow? Or, does it need to have completed the flow before it can be added again?
2. if the profile has to complete the flow before it can be added again into it, is there a way to remove a profile from a flow?

Thanks for your help!

Best answer by retention

Hi @wovemade, welcome to the community!

So metrics (custom events) triggered Flow can repeat, but as you observed, there are some caveats.  As far as I understand:

  • If someone is in a Flow, they can’t also be in it until they are completed.  So I can’t keep entering a Flow until the last message (and any time delays) are fulfilled (exited the Flow).
  • As far as I know, you can’t manually exit a Flow, and then re-add them to the beginning of the Flow simultaneously.  I thought maybe there are some clever ways to add some conditional branches or message filters to invalidate someone, but that would only evaluate at the runtime when the next message is intended to be sent which may occur after you intend to re-enter them into the Flow.

A work around, though not super elegant, is to break up your Flow into small single-message Flows with no initial time delays.  Since each email (of the “Flow”) will send immediately, you can re-enter someone into the whichever message of the “Flow”.  However, this also means that your system has to trigger each email accordingly and maintain business rule of when to fire Email #1, Email #2, and so on.

Unless anyone else knows another method, please chime in!

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retention
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  • September 23, 2024

Hi @wovemade, welcome to the community!

So metrics (custom events) triggered Flow can repeat, but as you observed, there are some caveats.  As far as I understand:

  • If someone is in a Flow, they can’t also be in it until they are completed.  So I can’t keep entering a Flow until the last message (and any time delays) are fulfilled (exited the Flow).
  • As far as I know, you can’t manually exit a Flow, and then re-add them to the beginning of the Flow simultaneously.  I thought maybe there are some clever ways to add some conditional branches or message filters to invalidate someone, but that would only evaluate at the runtime when the next message is intended to be sent which may occur after you intend to re-enter them into the Flow.

A work around, though not super elegant, is to break up your Flow into small single-message Flows with no initial time delays.  Since each email (of the “Flow”) will send immediately, you can re-enter someone into the whichever message of the “Flow”.  However, this also means that your system has to trigger each email accordingly and maintain business rule of when to fire Email #1, Email #2, and so on.

Unless anyone else knows another method, please chime in!


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  • September 24, 2024

Thank you,  @retention !

I appreciate the clarifications about the permanence of someone inside a flow.

I will follow an approach similar to what you outlined. I’ll be breaking down my big flow into smaller ones along multiple filters.

I am walking away from Hubspot, one feature I liked about their automations is that there’s a way to remove someone from a flow (when they meet a goal for instance). It would be nice for Klaviyo to have something like that.

Thank you!