Identity, Exceptions and Deliveries

A workflow's tabs follow a run in order: Ways in, Identity, Agent flow, Deliveries, then Exceptions. Each tab saves as you edit. Some of what you build is saved before live runs follow it; the tab says so in a note at the top, so nothing is ever dropped without a word.

What runs today

Identity

• The Identity tab holds the steps that work out who a run is for: Find person, outside lookups, Smart filter, Map and Who this is, as The Identity chain explains.
• Changes save shortly after you stop editing. If someone else saved first, the tab shows their copy and says so.
• Making a version Live keeps the Identity graph it had, so later edits change only the draft.
• Until the engine is connected, live conversations do not run these steps. Build and save them now; they are kept for when it is.

Exceptions

The Exceptions tab is a canvas: the Exception at the top left, each step a row branching off it. It starts with a By kind router, one route per kind on error.kind and Otherwise last. Exceptions: kinds and routing explains how a run raises one.

• Steps you can add: Reply on the channel it came in on, Email, Slack, Send to an address, an App action in a connected app, and Event, which sends a company event other workflows can start from. Inside Exceptions an Event never raises another exception.
• Shaping steps: a Switchboard sends each exception to one group of steps by its kind or other rules, a Gate lets an exception through to one step only when conditions hold, and a Map shapes what one step sends.
• Each card's sample is canned data: trying the graph sends nothing.
• Until the engine is connected, runs don't follow these steps: every exception is logged in Runs and the workflow owners are alerted.
• If someone else saved Exceptions first, their changes and yours are both kept.

Kinds of exceptions

Kinds on the tab's step bar shows how many kinds there are and opens the Kinds of exceptions side panel. It lists each kind a run can raise, where it is raised and where the By kind router sends it. Steps with their own If this fails handle their failures first.

• Built in: the kinds the engine raises itself, such as step_failed, agent_flow_failed, delivery_failed and not_verified.
• This workflow's kinds: raised by its Gates and Throws, or defined here. A Gate or Throw set to Exception adds its kind.
• Each kind shows its name, a plain description, where it is raised (for example, two Gates on Ways in) and its route. Click a kind to light its route up on the canvas.
• A kind no route matches says Not routed, goes to Otherwise, with Add a route ›. A kind two routes match says which route gets it: only the first.
• Define a kind with a short name, such as refund_requested, and a description. It can then be picked on a Gate or Throw. Names are unique.
• Edit renames or describes a kind. Renaming changes every Gate, Throw and route that uses it.

Deliveries

The Deliveries tab says what happens with the agent's result after the Agent flow. It shares its step bar with Exceptions, so chips, labels and order match.

• On Hosted by Falcon, Call a URL deliveries are kept: each with its Gate (when it sends), its Map (what it sends), Turn off, and the Switchboards that choose between them. They send when the workflow finishes.
• Not kept on this server yet, and said in plain words on the step instead of being dropped: other kinds of delivery, a Throw after the agent, Deliver now, Route by a question, and a step left detached.
• If the workflow was changed somewhere else, the tab shows the latest and Undo brings your change back. Undo never takes out what someone else saved.

When Ask Studio changes a page

When you apply a change Ask Studio suggested, the page you are on reads it again at once, and so do your other open tabs for the same company. The step or field that changed opens and lights up.

• Your unsaved edit is never thrown away: it stays on the page, or one Undo away.
• Undo is offered only while nothing else has been edited since the change arrived. On Exceptions that means both the canvas and the kinds.
• This works on way-in chains, the Agent flow, Deliveries, Exceptions, Identity, web chats, email ways in, request URLs, Connections, People and Settings.