Table of Contents

Get started with journeys

Raquel Updated by Raquel

Powerful chat journeys should be easy to create! Let's dive in.

Care starts with a conversation. Journeys is the one place in Turn where you design and build your chat service. Let's look at what you can do on the Journey page.

Playbooks

If you’re new to Turn and need to create your chat service, it can feel daunting to get started. Not anymore!

Select one of our pre-build journeys to remove the scary "blank canvas" feeling. Use it out of the box, or edit it to your use case. Building has never been this smooth!

Using a playbook allows you to get going with a click. Test out real examples without having to build anything yourself. Once you are ready, simply edit the message copy to fit your chat service. You can add or remove blocks from the journey's flow. You can rename the journey and update the trigger that kicks it off.

We added yellow notes to the playbooks, to add instructions and/or best practice tips for you.

Build from scratch

Whether you want to create a no-code or a code journey, you can always choose to start from scratch. This allows you to build whatever you need. Your chat service, your way!

Your chat service will typically consist of multiple journeys, each journey providing the user with a different content topic or feature. e.g. Menu, Onboarding, Topic 1, Topic 2, and Survey.
No-code journeys allow you to view the code

Once you open a no-code journey you will see a little code icon in the header. If you click that it will show you the underlining code. For now, the code is read only

Choosing the </> Code version

We've documented everything you need to know; from a general overview covering the code structure and language to all the available functions and expressions that allows you to punch above your (coding) weight. Everything comes with ready-to-use code examples!

Important: the Version History and Staging options are not available in the Journey </> code version. Learn more on Preview and Test.

Message types and Action blocks

Want to use media messages? We have you covered! Excited to use Lists to provide menu options? Sure thing!

Simply click the + icon in the top left of the canvas to add a new message. Select any of the available message types to build your engaging chat service.

Message types
  • Text: Plain and simple card with copy. You can also add media here: Image, Video, Document or Audio. (Check this article for size restrictions)
  • Question: When you send a text question, Turn will wait for the user to respond before moving on to the next interaction.
  • Buttons: One-click replies for users. This reduces errors and improves the user experience. You can use up to 3 buttons per message.
  • List: Expand up to 10 options for users to choose from. Great for menus.
  • Template: Pre-approved messages to re-open conversations. Remember WhatsApp dictates a couple of rules around templates.
  • AI: Once you have your AI integration set up successfully and provided relevant information for your AI assistant, 6 AI-powered blocks will be available: Generate text, Answer a question, Classify text, Classify image, Text to voice and Voice to text
Use the text formatting (bold, italics, etc.) and emoji shortcuts to make your messages more readable.
Action blocks
  • Update profile field: Dynamically update a contact profile field, even when the user is not messaging you.
  • Save insights: save responses as downloadable results.
  • Code: More freedom and flexibility to extend the power of your journey.
  • Branch: Split journeys to make sure users get the correct information and help suitable to their personal situation.
  • Start a stack: Easily connect all the pieces of your chat service.
  • Route to operator: Seamless handover between a human and a bot.

The Canvas Arrows

The flow of your journey is determined by dragging the arrows to connect one message to the next. You can hover over an arrow to delete the connection.

You can also set the interaction on the Setting panel if you prefer.

Settings panel

Click on a message to open the Settings panel on the right. Settings are unique to each message. There are 3 sections in the Setting panel: General, Customize, Interactions, and Actions.

  • General: Rename the title or set the message to be the first message in the chat journey.
  • Customize: Enable header and footer placeholders in Button and List card types.
  • Interactions: Define what message comes next, e.g. in this section, you determine what happens when a specific button or list option is clicked.
  • Actions: All the advanced things. As users interact with your chat service you can (1) update contact profile fields, and/or (2) save specific responses as downloadable results.

Preview your journey

The absolute best part is to see your work in action. Click the Preview button and immediately interact with the journey you've just designed. Test to see that it works as intended and, if needed, tweak copy or change interaction until you are 100% happy. Test and build can't get easier than this!

Learn more on the Preview and Test section.

Changes are automatically saved

We will save your work as you build. One less thing to think about.

  • When saving is in progress the top bar will show "Saving changes".
  • When everything is successfully saved the top bar will show "All changes saved".

This is just the start! We hope you feel comfortable to try it out. Have fun!

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