Editing a Flow whilst live, or clone and rebuild then switch?

@In the Inbox  Thanks for your speedy reply!  I think it might actually end up being changes to splits and logic so I probably feel more comfortable starting from scratch now I’m thinking more about it - seems safer. I can always refer back to the original Flow analytics to make comparisons can’t I?  That way I leave the existing running, prepare my new one and switch old off and new on… I use templates for the emails so they should be simple enough to update and put in.  Thanks, again!

Hi @zoecccp 

Yes, if you’re planning to make changes to splits and logic, then I would duplicate the entire flow and make your changes to the new version. And this will ensure you retain metrics from the old flow to compare with the new flow.

The only thing to be mindful to make sure you keep your metrics separate is to give the messages in your new flow slightly different names. This helps keep things straight if you are exporting data to compare.

Good luck! Please let us know if you have any additional questions.

@In the Inbox 

Hey guys,

Jumping in here, as we are have redesigned our website and are updating creative look & feel across all flows in line with this.

Can I confirm you are suggesting it is best to clone the individual campaigns WITHIN the flow, make the changes to the new campaign, then set the old one to draft & new one live?

Is this the best method to keep past analytics?

Thanks,

Ellen

Hi Ellen, I’m by no means an expert, but as a Klaviyo user, I’ve taken both approaches on various Flows depending on how much I wanted to change them. 

In some cases I cloned / copied each Flow email into my templates and saved them there whilst amending them into new versions, then simply re-attached / replaced them in the original Flow when they were all ready to go.

In other cases where we’ve gone for more segmentation and splits than an original Flow had, I have built out an entirely new Flow in Draft, created templates to insert into the Flow, then switched it to live once everything was in place and ready. 

In terms of monitoring you can still access data on Flows that have been switched to draft or archived so it is possible to compare but it’s a little less streamlined :-)

So you dont delete the original one,  and make the new one “Live” correct?

Hi everyone, jumping into this thread with a related question if anyone can help!

If I choose to build out an entirely new Flow and switch the statuses when I’m ready to go live, how do I ensure that recipients who are waiting on emails in the legacy flow receive the remaining emails? Because if I switch all the emails to Draft, presumably they won’t send? Or do customers entering the flow receive the full flow as it was designed when they entered it?

Many thanks!

Marianne

Hi @marianne, this is a good question, and the answer can be a bit tricky based on your situation.  So a few things just to make sure we have the right context because it can vary if any of the below is not aligned:

• Your Flow (Post Purchase) is triggered on a metric and not a segment (e.g. Fulfilled Order, or Placed Order event).
• You have an existing Flow A (that is Live and users are going through it) with several steps (and time delays between them). 
• You’re building a separate New Flow B that you want to “switch to” that also have several steps with similar time delays as the existing Flow A 
• You want to switch from Flow A to Flow B (and not just add the changes to Flow A), and you want people who are already going down Flow A to switch to Flow B for any remaining messages (and time delays).

Here’s what I would do in this case:

1. Pause (move to Manual) all messages in Flow A.  This will halt all messages going out, but still keep everyone going through the Flow.  In case any errors or issues, you can still go back and send those messages manually (albeit, it may not be perfectly timed - but gives you an option to do that).
2. Turn on Flow B (make all messages in Flow B Live). 
3. Back Populate Flow B so that anyone that was in Flow A, will “line up” in Flow B accordingly.  They will fall into place, so that they don’t start from the first message of Flow B, but where they should be in Flow B. 
4. If you want to do extra sanity checking, you can put message specific filters in each of the messages in Flow B (assuming they match similarly with Flow) “has not received Message X from Flow A” so that they don’t get a similar/same message if they already received it.  You’ll need to do this if some of your timing is different between Flow A and Flow B - so if Flow A Message #2 is 2 days delay, but Flow B Message #2 is 5 days delay, a person might have received Message Flow A Message #2, and then receive Flow B Message #2 as well - if that’s not what you intend to do, make sure to filter anyone who have received Flow A Message #2 (from Flow B Message #2).  

Once everything is working, you can turn all the messages in Flow A to “Draft” - but, don’t delete Flow A!  You’ll want that around for historical performance data since Klaviyo won’t transfer the historical data from Flow A to Flow B of course!  That way, you can compare your performance in Flow B to historical performance in Flow A.  Generally speaking, don’t delete Flows, you can just Archive them. :) 

Hope that helps!

This is so helpful, thank you Joseph!

If I didn’t want to back populate flow B and only wanted new subscribers going through that new flow, presumably I could just follow steps 1 and 2, then send remaining flow A messages manually? 

And final question – if you were only making cosmetic changes to emails (e.g. different subject lines, content), would you just clone each message individually in the original flow and switch statuses when ready (as suggested by the original poster) instead of doing this whole flow migration?

Thanks again!