Update your existing Visual Automation without interrupting the subscriber flow
Our overall recommendation is to avoid making edits to a Visual Automation once it's live. Sometimes, however, changes need to be made after the fact.
With the following method, you can edit your Automation without affecting the subscribers going through the current version!
1. Create the new, updated version of your Automation
Think of it as ‘phasing out’ the old version of your current Visual Automation.
The first step is to create a brand new Visual Automation, with your changes applied, to replace the original version.
Leave this new version paused for now.
2. Create a placeholder form
Create a new form from the Forms page of your account, and give it a name like ‘Placeholder Form’.
Don’t worry about configuring its design or settings. This form will not be embedded anywhere, so none of your subscribers will ever see it.
3. Remove all the original Automation’s entry points and replace them with the placeholder form instead
Go back to the original Visual Automation — the one that you want to phase out — and replace all of the entry points with just one: our new placeholder form.
NOTE: You won’t be able to delete the last (or only) Automation entry point before adding a new entry point to replace it. You can add the new placeholder form as a new entry point, and then delete all the others.
To help visualize this, here’s how your Automation might look before & after this step:
Before: note that the original Automation has two entry points (top row)
After: all the Automation’s entry points have now been replaced with just one (our new placeholder form)
3. Unpause the new version of the Automation
Now, the original version of the Automation only has a placeholder form as the entry point, and that placeholder form isn’t (and shouldn’t be) embedded anywhere.
Since the original Automation has no ‘active’ entry point, you can leave it unpaused for as long as it takes current subscribers to complete it. The placeholder entry point makes it impossible for anyone new to enter it, so you’re free to leave it running as long as needed.
Also, you may now un-pause the new version of your Automation, with the correct active entry points!
New incoming subscribers will now enter into the new version of the Automation, meaning that you’ve effectively switched which Automation configuration you’re using without interrupting any of your current subscribers!
TIP: Feel free to re-use your Placeholder form for any Visual Automations that you want to phase out in the future, using this method.