Journeys

You will learn 

• What a journey is
• Creating a journey
• Scheduling / starting a journey
• Editing a journey
• Viewing a journey
• Sharing a journey
• Cloning a journey
• Deleting a journey
• Turning a journey off/on
• Manage enrollment within a journey
• Test a journey

What is a journey 

A journey is a sequence of automated actions. Journeys can be triggered in three different ways, depending on how and when you want recipients to receive communications:

• Enroll recipients — you manually select who enters the journey.
• List membership — employees are enrolled automatically as they join a list.
• On a schedule — a journey runs automatically based on a defined schedule in your Workshop account.

Any list you have built or synced into Workshop can trigger a journey.

For example, a new hire onboarding journey can be triggered when a new employee is added to your synced new hire list. After they are enrolled, they can be sent multiple automated emails over time that introduce them to useful information about their role and the company. 

Creating a journey 

Before creating a journey, make sure you have:

• The list you’ll use in the journey in your Workshop account
• The automated email(s) you want to send
   

If you need assistance with getting started on the list for your journey, see our articles on Best Practices:

• Best practices for creating Journeys with automatic lists
• Best practices for creating Journeys with synced lists
• Best practices for creating Journeys with manual lists

If you need to create your automated emails, see our article Creating & publishing an automated email

Initial setup

1. Name your journey – this appears in the Journeys index and helps with quick identification.
2. Assign your journey to a campaign (recommended: create a campaign for each journey). This lets you view all sends for all emails in the journey, along with detailed analytics. You can assign a campaign at any point.
3. Choose whether to allow weekend sends. By default, Workshop does not send on weekends; messages are pushed to Monday.
4. (Premium only) Configure blackout date sending. By default, Workshop does not send Journey messages on blackout dates. If a scheduled step falls within a blackout period, the message is held and sent after the blackout period ends.

   1. Optional override (admins only): Admins can set a Journey to ignore blackout dates, meaning Journey communications will send as scheduled even if they coincide with a blackout date.

Trigger a journey

The first step when creating your journey is to determine what your trigger step should be. 

For any trigger type, you will select specific lists and/or individuals to enroll within the Journey. You can also utilize our Do not enroll feature to exclude certain lists or individuals. This allows you to refine your audience without creating a new list. Timing matters with this functionality — if someone is added to the Do not enroll list before the enroll list, they will not enter the journey, and vice versa.

There are three trigger options:

1. Enroll Recipients

• Recipients are manually selected (lists or individuals).
• No dynamic enrollment — Workshop takes a snapshot at time of initial email send.
• Best for one-time series like event reminders or holiday drip campaigns.
   

2. List Membership

• Recipients are added dynamically whenever they join the selected list(s).
  • You can decide whether to include both current and new members in the journey, or only new members moving forward.
• Best for communications tied to life events (e.g., birthdays, hire dates).

For List Membership journeys, here’s how recipients are added to your list—and automatically enrolled in the journey—based on each list type:

With List Membership, you will determine if all current & new or just new list members will be added to a journey. 

• For Automatic Lists, we recommend selecting to enroll only new list members
• For Synced & Manual/CSV Lists, we recommend selecting to enroll current & new list members 

3. On a schedule (recurring send)

• The journey runs automatically on a defined schedule, such as daily, weekly, monthly, or on a custom recurring cadence.
  • Recipients do not need to newly join a list or be manually re-enrolled each time.
• Your journey start date anchors the schedule. For example, if you choose a start date that falls on a Monday and select a weekly cadence, the journey will run every week on Monday.
• You can choose whether the schedule runs indefinitely or ends on a specific date. This is helpful for time-bound programs (for example, a quarterly benefits reminder that ends after open enrollment).

With scheduled journeys, the trigger controls when the journey runs, while the journey steps control what is sent and how it is timed during each run. This trigger is best for recurring communications like IT reminders, financial notices, or regular announcements.

Once you have selected what type of journey you are creating and therefore, what type of trigger you want to use, you will proceed to selecting your journey steps. 

Add a step to a journey

The steps available today within a journey allow you to choose Actions or Timing to sequentially build out your journey. 

Actions

Actions allow you to select what email communications you want to send within your journey. Upon selecting this step, you will be prompted to select which automated email you want to send within that scheduled action.

Timing 

Timing lets you add a wait step in your journey, so you can control exactly when each message goes out. 

How you configure that wait step depends on your journey trigger. Here's a quick breakdown of the different wait types available:

Wait until a specific time of day

You can set a precise time for when the next step should happen. The wait will end on the same day as:

• A recipient is enrolled in the journey

• The journey’s start date

• The previous wait step

If a wait step falls on the same day as list enrollment, you can choose what happens when someone is enrolled after the scheduled time of day:

• Wait until the following day — Sends the email the next day at the scheduled time.

• Move to the next step immediately — Sends the email right away and advances the recipient to the next wait step.

Wait for a set amount of time

Choose to wait a specific number of hours or days. These wait steps build on top of the prior wait steps within your journey.

For instance, you may set up your new hire journey to send an automated email 7 days, 30 days and 90 days after their hire date. To set this up, you will need:

• A wait step of 7 days

• A wait step of 23 days

• A wait step of 60 days

Wait until a calendar date

You can also pick a specific date in the future (this option only appears for journeys that use the Enroll Recipients trigger). For a reminder journey, you can select the exact days for each communication such as Sept 1st, Sept 15th, Oct 2nd etc. 

Wait until a specific day of the week

This wait type lets you schedule a step to occur on the next occurrence of a specific weekday. It’s useful when you want messages to always send on a consistent weekly cadence — for example, every Monday, or the next Friday after someone enrolls in the journey.

For every wait step — regardless of whether you’re waiting until a time of day, a set duration, a calendar date, or a specific day of the week — you can choose the exact time the next email should send once the wait is complete.

When configuring a wait step, you’ll see an option to select a what time does the wait end. This ensures your message goes out at a consistent, predictable moment for recipients. 

Logic 

Logic lets you add a conditional split step in your Journey, so you can branch recipients into one of two paths based on a selected condition. This enables more personalized and dynamic experiences.

Here's a quick breakdown of the different conditions available:

Open event

• Branches based on whether a recipient opened an email
• Limited to emails within the same journey

Click event

• Branches based on whether a recipient clicked a link  within an email
• Limited to emails within the same journey

List membership

• Branches based on whether a Journey recipient belongs to the selected list
• Supports any list in your account

Percentage split

• Randomly divides your audience into two groups (example: 50% / 50% split)
• Percentage splits are probabilistic, not quota-based - this means distribution is randomized per recipient, not evenly enforced across all users

To build out your journey, we recommend using a series of scheduling steps, waits plus, emails and logic. In most instances, you will select a wait prior to selecting your email or logic. 

Edit steps in a journey

To insert steps within a journey, you can click on the + icon in between two steps to add an additional step. 

To delete a step, click into the step and then click Delete in the bottom right corner. 

 

Scheduling / starting a journey

Only users with publishing permissions can schedule or start a journey.

Enroll recipients & On a schedule trigger – Schedule your journey from Review & Schedule. Journey will start on the date chosen in the trigger step.

List Membership trigger – Start your journey from Review & Start. Recipients are enrolled as they join the list.

Editing a journey

Once a journey has become active, you are unable to edit the journey. To make updates, clone and edit the journey and then we recommend deleting the original journey. 

Viewing a journey

Journey Details:

You can access journeys from the Journeys index, found in the top navigation.

From the Journeys index, you can view:

• Status – Draft, Active, or Completed
• Journey name – The name given during setup
• Start date – When the journey began
• End date – Only populated for journeys with Enroll recipient trigger
• Campaign – The campaign the journey is assigned to
• Shared with – Workshop users who have access to the journey
• Owner – The creator of the journey

Analytics:

When you open an active or completed journey, you can view:

• Engagement metrics – Open and click rates for each email step; opens or clicks performed for each logic step
• Enrollment metrics – Shows the total number of recipients in the journey and their current progress, from enrollment to completion.

From the trigger step, you can view recipient progress through the journey:

• Enrolled – Total number of recipients who have entered the journey
• Recipients in progress – Currently moving through the journey
• Recipients finished – Have completed the journey

For each email step in the journey, you’ll see its open and click rates. You can also click into the email to view:

• Subject line
• Preview text
• Sender details
• Recipient list for that email in the journey

If recipients are in progress, you can click into wait steps to see:

• Who is currently in that step
• How much time remains for each recipient in that step

For logic steps, you can see explicitly which m

The best way to view a journey and its performance is a campaign. From a campaign, you are able to view every individual send of every email in a given journey. This allows you to have a much more complete view of the journey, along with more granular data if you so wish. 

Sharing a journey

Any journey you create within your Workshop account is not shared by default with other users. 

Anyone the journey has been shared with has access to view, edit, and publish the journey (if they have publishing permission). Once published, they will have access to view the journey’s analytics, including who has been enrolled in the journey. 

Once someone has access to a journey, they can:

• Edit drafts
• Share with others
• Clone journey

To share a journey:

• In the journey builder, click Share in the top actions bar.
• After publishing, you share via the Share option within the actions dropdown.
• In your journeys list, hover over the journey, click the 3-dot menu, and select Share journey. 

Sharing a journey does not grant a user access to the automated emails or campaign that the journey is associated with. These tools have separate sharing mechanisms. 

Cloning a journey

Cloning a journey returns it to a draft state, making it editable for future updates.

To clone a journey:

• After publishing, you share via the Clone journey option within the actions dropdown.
• In your journeys list, hover over the journey, click the 3-dot menu, and select Clone journey. 

Deleting a journey

The journey owner can delete it at any time, but this action cannot be undone.

By deleting a journey, you will lose the journey’s enrollment data. You will still be able to access the email analytics on the automated email or within the journey’s campaign.

To delete a journey:

• In your journeys list, hover over the journey, click the 3-dot menu, and select Delete journey. 

   

Turning a journey off/on 

Journeys can be turned off and on at any time, giving you the flexibility to either stop a journey completely or temporarily. 

Importantly, turning a journey off does not change the timing of your sends — when you turn it back on, enrollees continue right on schedule, receiving emails at the moments you originally intended rather than having dates delayed by the time period for which the journey was turned off.

• Turning Off a Journey

  • Any user with access to the journey can turn it off.

  • Once off, no further email communications will be sent to current enrollees.

  • Enrollees will still move through the journey steps, but without receiving emails.

  • No new enrollees will be added while the journey is off.

• Turning On a Journey

  • A journey can be turned back on at any time.

    • Important: If the journey is set up as an Enroll Recipient–triggered journey, it cannot be turned back on unless there are active enrollees present in the journey.

  • When turned back on, enrollees pick up where they currently are in the journey.

  • Once the journey is turned back on, you’ll have the option to decide whether or not to add recipients who would have been enrolled while it was off.

Example Scenario

Imagine you’re running an onboarding journey:

• Turn a journey off indefinitely – user no longer wants to use that journey within their organization.
• Turn a journey off temporarily – user does not want the journey email communications to be sent during a sensitive time (i.e. layoffs, holidays, geopolitical events).

Manage enrollment

You can now manage who is enrolled in a journey at any time — even after the journey has started or completed. 

From the Actions menu, select Manage Enrollment to add new recipients by list or individually. New recipients always begin at the start of the journey and will automatically receive any previously scheduled communications so they stay in sync with the current step. 

In addition, you can unenroll recipients mid-journey to refine your targeting — for example, removing users who have already taken the desired action so only those who still need to engage continue receiving communications. 

 

You can also turn a completed journey back on to reuse it for a new audience, without needing to clone or rebuild anything. This gives you full flexibility to maintain accurate, personally targeted journeys with less manual work and cleaner reporting.

Re-enrollment rule: A recipient cannot be re-added to the same journey until they have been exited for at least 12 hours. This applies whether you’re enrolling manually, via list membership, or through a scheduled journey.

 

Test a journey