Onboarding: Configuration (EDP)

This Help system uses the terms configuration and authoring to describe the two methods of editing a journey.

Configuration refers to the process of associating supporting assets (such as Campaigns or Segments) to steps in the journey flow. For example, if you have a Send Email step in the flow, you must configure the step by selecting the Messaging Campaign associated with this step. Configuration is required for all journeys, even if you're using a standard journey.

Authoring refers to the process of editing the flow of events in the journey, such as adding or removing steps, drawing connection lines between steps, and so forth. If you're using an "out of the box" standard journey, you may not need to do any authoring; you can simply configure the steps in the standard journey and publish it. However, you need to author the journey if you want to make any changes to the steps that comprise the journey, or if you're building a new journey from scratch.

This Help topic focuses on how to configure a standard journey. For more information on authoring, please see Self Service Journeys.

Messaging Campaigns

The Onboarding journey communicates with consumers by means of Email Campaigns created and deployed from Cheetah Messaging.

Note: This topic does not go into details on how to create Campaigns. For more details on this process, please see the Cheetah Messaging Online Help system, or speak with your Technical Services team.

When creating the Email Campaigns, they should be built with the following configurations:

Use EDP or a Messaging table as the data source for the Campaign.
Campaign Type is Event-triggered.

Using EDP as the data source provides additional functionality, such as integrated access to EDP Segments and Loyalty objects, at-send-time decisioning and optimization, and support for Machine Learning models.

The rest of the Campaign configuration follows a normal Campaign setup -- select your Sender Profile, enter the message content, optionally send proofs, then launch the Campaign.

After you create and launch the Campaigns for this journey, you must associate each of them with an Action step in the journey itself. For more details on this process, see "Journey Configuration" below.

Journey Configuration

Once you have built all of the necessary supporting assets, the final step in the journey setup is to create the journey, and assign the supporting assets to the appropriate steps within the journey. The standard Onboarding journey is available in the Journey Library; this journey serves as a template that you can configure as needed.

Create a New Standard Journey

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When creating a new journey, the platform allows you to either use an existing standard journey as the starting point, or you can create a new journey from scratch.

To create a new journey based on one of the standard journey types:

From the My Journeys screen, hover your mouse cursor over Add Journey in the top-right corner of the My Journeys screen.

From the drop-down menu, select "Start from a library template." The Journey Library is displayed.
Click the desired standard journey. The Journey Details screen is displayed.
Click Create.
Enter a name for your journey, then click Create.
The Journey Designer screen is displayed and populated with the default flow for the selected standard journey.

Note: While you can create multiple instances of each of the standard journeys, only one instance can be published at a time. This restriction will be eliminated in a future release of Journey Designer.

Action Steps

Within Journey Designer, an Action step refers to a process that the platform executes. The standard Onboarding journey comprises four Send Email Action steps, all of which must be associated with a corresponding Cheetah Messaging Campaign.

Assign a Campaign to an Action Step

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To associate a Campaign with an Action step:

Click the desired Send Email, Send Notification, or Send SMS step within the flowchart depiction of the journey.
In the left-hand panel, in the Name field, enter a label for this step.
To select the desired Campaign, either:

Enter the Running Campaign ID of the Campaign. The Running Campaign ID is generated when you launch a Campaign, and it can be found within the header bar of the Campaign Details screen in Messaging. Be sure NOT to use the Object ID or the Object Reference ID.
Click Select. The Select Campaign pop-up window is displayed. Optionally filter the available Campaigns by name. Select the desired Campaign, then click Select.

Remove an Action Step

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Instead of the default Action step, you can optionally remove an unneeded Action step.

To remove an Action step:

Hover your mouse cursor over an Action step, and click the "x" (delete) icon.
The platform removes the Action step and replaces it with a blank placeholder.

Replace an Action Step

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Existing Action steps in a journey can be replaced with alternatives in order to meet your business objectives. To swap an existing Action step with a different Action step type:

Hover your mouse cursor over an Action step, and click the "x" (delete) icon. The platform removes the Action step and replaces it with a blank placeholder.
Click the "+" (add) icon that appears within the placeholder step. A slide-out panel on the left displays a menu of possible Action step types.
From the list on the left, pick the desired Action type. The platform supports the following Action types:

	Send Email	Trigger the deployment of a Messaging Campaign in the Email channel.
	Send SMS	Trigger the deployment of a Messaging Campaign in the SMS channel.
	Send Notification	Trigger the deployment of a Messaging Campaign in the Push Notification channel.
	Grant Offer	Grant discounts or other promotions to your consumer.
	Mark as Lapsed	Set a "lapsed" flag within the EDP database to "true," indicating that this consumer is no longer actively engaged with your brand.
	Notify Call Center	Send information from Journey Designer to some other internal system, such as a Call Center.
	Custom	Define your own actions for the journey to perform, allowing you to integrate third-party services or custom processes in EDP. Please speak to your Technical Services team for more details on how to configure a Custom action

Wait Steps

Within Journey Designer, a Wait step is used to allow an appropriate period of time to elapse before executing the next step in the journey. All of the Send Email Action steps within the default Onboarding journey are followed by a Wait step. After this wait time has elapsed, Journey Designer progresses the consumer to the next step. The duration of each of these wait times can be configured to meet your business requirements.

Define Wait Duration

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To configure a Wait step:

Within the flowchart depiction of the journey, click a Wait step.
In the left-hand panel, enter a duration.

Note: Optionally, you can disable a Wait step if you want the journey to immediately move to the next step; simply set the wait time duration to zero.

Save and Publish a Journey

The final step in the journey configuration process is to save and publish the journey.

Save a Journey

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To save your journey, either:

Click Apply to save your changes and remain on the Journey Designer screen, or
Click Save to save your changes and return to the My Journeys screen.

When you save your journey, the platform validates that the journey flow is valid. If your journey encounters any of the following errors, a message is displayed indicating the nature of the issue. Correct the issue, and retry the save process.

All journey steps have their required settings populated (see Configuring a Journey for more information).
The journey has one Start Journey step.
The journey has at least one Exit Journey step.
The journey can not have circular logic (that is, connections that go in a circle and prevent a consumer from ever exiting the journey).
The journey can not contain any "orphaned" steps that don't have the requisite number of entry and exit connections:

Start Journey: one exit connection, and no entry connections.
Exit Journey: at least one entry connection, and no exit connections.
Action Steps: at least one entry connection, and one exit connection.
Wait Steps: at least one entry connection, and one exit connection.
Update Journey: one exit connection, and no entry connections.
Decision: one entry connection, and two exit connections.
A / B Split: one entry connection, and either two or three exit connections.

Note: You can't publish a journey until you have successfully saved it.

Publish a Journey

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When you publish a new journey, the platform changes its status from "Draft" to "Running." The journey is then considered live and in use, and the platform can begin adding consumers to it.

To publish a journey:

The journey must be saved before you can publish it, so if you have made any changes, click Apply to save the changes and remain on the Journey Designer screen.
Click Publish. A confirmation screen is displayed, showing all of the dependencies that must be configured to support this journey, such as Messaging Campaigns, EDP Actions and Triggers, Loyalty Offers, etc.
Click Publish.

Publish Changes to a Journey

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Whenever you make changes to a live journey, you must re-publish the journey in order to apply the changes.

When you re-publish a journey, all new consumers added to the journey from that point forward will use the new configuration. For consumers currently in the journey, only consumers that have not yet reached the modified step (or steps) will be affected by the new configuration.

To publish changes:

In the top-right corner of the Journey Designer screen, click Publish Changes. A confirmation screen is displayed.
Click Publish Changes.

Optionally, you can also discard the changes to roll-back to the "last published" iteration of the journey. To discard changes:

In the top-right corner of the Journey Designer screen, the platform displays a notification reading: "Unpublished changes: publish or discard them." Click the "discard" link.
A confirmation screen is displayed; click OK.

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