Publishing and activating a workflow
Validate a draft workflow, fix any publish errors, and turn it on so it starts enrolling contacts.
A workflow stays a draft and does nothing until you publish it. Publishing runs a full validation check and, if everything passes, turns the workflow on so it starts enrolling contacts.
From draft to active
Open a workflow from Workflows and build it out on the canvas. The status badge near the workflow name tells you where it stands: draft, active, or paused. A new workflow is a draft until its first successful publish.
Open the workflow
Pick the workflow you want to turn on from Workflows. You land on the builder canvas with its trigger and steps.
Click Publish
In the top toolbar, click Publish. (On a workflow that's already live, the button reads Publish changes — it republishes your edits.) SAMI OS validates the whole workflow before anything goes live.
Clear any errors
If validation fails, a red Cannot publish panel lists each issue. Fix them on the canvas and click Publish again.
Confirm it's active
On success, the status badge flips to active and a version badge appears. The workflow now enrolls contacts whose events match your trigger.
Only members who can manage workflows see the Publish button. If it's missing, ask an owner or admin to publish, or check your role in Members.
What validation checks
Publishing blocks if any of these aren't satisfied. Each failure shows up as its own line in the Cannot publish list, usually naming the step or trigger so you know exactly where to look.
- At least one trigger. A workflow needs an event to start it.
- At least one step. There has to be something to run.
- Required fields are filled. Each step type has its own required fields — a Send SMS step needs a message body, a Create Task step needs a title, a Send Email step needs a connected account, a subject, and a body.
- Data mapping tokens resolve. Any
{{trigger.*}}or earlier-step token you mapped into a field has to point at data that's actually available at that point in the flow. - Integration accounts are connected. App steps and triggers (such as CINC or other connected apps) must have a connected account selected before they can go live.
- No steps point to missing nodes. If a step connects to something that was deleted, reconnect it on the canvas first.
Deleting a step can detach the steps below it. The builder warns you when that happens — reconnect the detached steps before you publish, or validation will flag them.
Versions, and switching status
Every successful publish bumps the version number by one — your first publish is v1, the next is v2, and so on. The version badge appears next to the status once a workflow is active, so you can tell at a glance whether your latest edits actually went live.
To take a workflow back offline, return to Workflows, select one or more workflows with their checkboxes, and use Set to Draft to stop enrollments while you keep editing, or Set to Active to turn them back on. Switching to draft leaves your steps untouched — it just stops new contacts from being enrolled.
Once a workflow is live, check the Run History tab on the workflow to confirm contacts are flowing through as expected, and wire it into your Pipeline or hand callers to your SAMI Bots as part of the same automation.
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Last updated 2026-06-21