Conversation Flows

The Conversation Flows page lets tenant administrators author data-driven flows that the chatbot runs when a contact picks a Flow node from a Conversation Menu. A flow is a sequence of typed variables and ordered steps; each step can prompt the contact for input, invoke a Conversation Skill, or branch based on what the contact replied.

Accessing the Page

• Route: /communications/flows
• Menu Path: Communications → Conversation Flows
• Primary audience: Tenant administrators building self-service conversational workflows.

Permissions

Permission	Description
communications.access (Read)	View flows and their steps
communications.access (Admin)	Create, edit, clone and delete flows; add or reorder variables and steps

Page Layout

• Left rail — the list of flows for the tenant. Each entry shows the flow name and a short description.
• Right pane — three tabs for the selected flow: Variables, Steps and Settings.

Flow Status

Status	Description
Draft	The flow is being authored and is not yet attached to any menu.

Once a flow is attached to a Flow node in a Conversation Menu it can be invoked by contacts; there is no separate “publish” step beyond saving the flow.

Variables tab

Each variable declares a typed slot that the flow fills from contact input or skill output, and that subsequent steps can reference.

Field	Description
Name	Identifier used by steps (for example, customer_phone)
Type	Text, number, date, boolean, BP ID or other registered types
Description	Internal note about how the variable is used
Default	Optional default value used when the contact does not supply one

Variables can be reordered with drag and drop.

Steps tab

Steps run sequentially. Each step is one of:

Step type	Description
Prompt	Sends a message to the contact and waits for a reply, storing the reply in a variable.
Skill	Invokes a Conversation Skill using the current variables as parameters and writes the result to a variable.
Branch	Picks the next step based on a variable value.
Send	Sends a final message to the contact (often the formatted result of an earlier skill call).

Steps can be reordered with drag and drop.

Settings tab

Field	Description
Name	Display name of the flow
Description	Internal description of what the flow does

Actions

Page Actions

Action	Description	Permission
New flow	Open the create-flow dialog	communications.access (Admin)

Flow Actions

Action	Description
Clone	Duplicate the flow, including its variables and steps, into a new Draft flow
Delete	Remove the flow. Flow nodes that pointed to it are surfaced in the menu editor with a “Flow no longer available” badge.
Add variable / step	Append a new variable or step to the corresponding tab
Reorder	Drag and drop a variable or step to a new position

Notes

• Cloning preserves variables and steps but always creates the copy in Draft, with "(copy)" appended to the original name.
• A flow cannot be deleted while any Conversation Menu still has a Flow node pointing to it — remove the menu node first.
• Variable references in step content use {{variable_name}} syntax, mirroring how email and WhatsApp templates render placeholders.
• Skill steps fail at runtime if the target skill has been retired or the tenant has lost access to the source module. The conversation falls back to the parent menu and the failure is recorded in Conversation Logs.

Common tasks

1. Open Communications → Conversation Flows.
2. Click New flow and name it “New customer onboarding”.
3. On the Variables tab, add a prospect_name (Text) variable and a prospect_phone (Text) variable.
4. On the Steps tab, add a Prompt step asking for the customer’s name and store it in prospect_name, then a Skill step calling prospects.create_or_find.
5. Open Communications → Conversation Menus, edit the default menu and add a Flow node that points to this flow.

Related Pages

• Conversation Menus — attach a flow to a Flow node in a menu
• Conversation Skills — the skills you can call from a Skill step
• Conversation Logs — see how a flow ran for an individual contact