Skip to content

Editing Canvases after launch

This reference article covers what can be changed in a Canvas after the initial launch.

For Canvases launched with Canvas Flow or the original editor, you can edit your Canvases after launch by:

  • Inserting new Canvas components into the user journey
  • Adding new variants and connections
  • Adjusting variant distribution
  • Stopping or resuming all Canvas steps

Keep in mind the following permissible post-launch Canvas edits depending on which workflow your Canvas was created with. If your Canvas uses the original Canvas workflow, you’ll need to clone to Canvas Flow first in order to perform post-launch edits.

You can delete any of the following in your user journey:

If you want to edit or add more components to your Canvas user journey, the following details will apply:

  • Users who haven’t entered the Canvas yet are eligible for any newly created components.
  • If your Canvas entry settings allow users to re-enter steps, users who have already passed newly created steps are eligible to re-enter.
  • Users who are currently in a launched Canvas, but haven’t reached the points of the user journey where new steps are added, are eligible to receive those newly added steps.

If you delete a Delay or Action Paths component, you can optionally redirect the users currently waiting in the step into another Canvas step. For Delays, users will remain in the step until the end of the delay period. For Action Paths, users will remain in the step until the end of the evaluation window.

See the Canvas Flow section for some best practices for specific editing use cases.

You can’t edit or delete existing connections, and can’t insert a component between existing connected steps.

If you want to edit or add more components to your Canvas user journey, the following details will apply:

  • Users who haven’t entered the Canvas yet are eligible for any newly created components.
  • If your Canvas entry settings allow users to re-enter steps, users who have already passed newly created steps are eligible to re-enter.
  • Users who are currently in a launched Canvas, but haven’t reached the newly added steps in the user journey, are eligible to receive those newly added steps.

If you update the Delay or Window settings for a Canvas step, only new users entering the Canvas and users that haven’t been queued for that step yet will receive the message at the updated delay. If a Delay component is the last step in the Canvas, users who reach that step are automatically advanced out of the Canvas and won’t receive any newly created steps.

Canvas details

You can edit these Canvas settings and information after a Canvas launches using either editor (the original or Canvas Flow):

  • Canvas name and description
  • Teams and tags
  • Entry type, schedule, and controls
  • Subscription status
  • Rate limiting
  • Frequency capping
  • Quiet Hours
  • Target audience

You can’t edit conversion events after a Canvas has launched.

Individual components

For individual Canvas components, you can edit the following details after launch:

  • Name
  • Message content
  • Triggers
  • Audience
  • Exception events
  • Delays

However, the component’s schedule type and control percentages are not editable after launch.

Canvas variant percentages

After launching a Canvas, you can only decrease the control variant percentages. If a variant percentage is modified in Canvas, you’ll find that your users may be redistributed to other variants.

Initially, these users are randomly assigned a particular variant before receiving a campaign for the first time. From then on, each successive time the campaign is received (or the user re-enters a Canvas variant), they will receive the same variant unless the variant percentages are modified.

If the variant percentages change, users may be redistributed to other variants. Users will stay in these variants until percentages are modified again. Note that for Canvases using branching with NOT filters with random bucket numbers, users may not receive the same branch each time in their user journey when they re-enter the Canvas.

Control groups

Control groups remain consistent if the variant percentage is unchanged. Users who previously received messages cannot enter the control group on a later send, nor can any user in the control group ever receive a message.

Local send time

Canvases scheduled to launch at a local send time can be edited up to 24 hours prior to the scheduled send time. This window is called the “safe zone”.

Best practices

Check out these best practices to keep in mind when editing or adding to your Canvas after it’s been launched using Canvas Flow.

Disconnected steps

You can launch your Canvas with disconnected steps and also save these Canvases post-launch. Before disconnecting a step from your workflow, we recommend checking the analytics view of the component for users pending.

Let’s say a user is in a disconnected step of your Canvas Flow workflow. This user will advance to the subsequent step if there is one. The step’s settings will dictate how the user should advance.

By creating or editing disconnected steps, you can make changes to these independent components without having to directly connect them to the rest of your Canvas. This helps with testing your components prior to going launching your Canvas again.

Time delays

Editing Canvases with time delays can be a bit tricky! So, keep in mind the following details as you make edits to your Canvases.

If you update the delay in a Delay component or evaluation window in the Action Paths component, only new users entering the Canvas and users that haven’t been queued for that step will receive the message at the updated time delay.

If you delete a component with a time delay (i.e., Delay or Action Paths) and decide to redirect those users into another Canvas component, the users will only be redirected after the step’s time delay has completed. For example, let’s say you delete a Delay component with a one day delay and redirect those users to a Message component. In this case, the users will only be redirected after the one day delay has been completed.

If your Canvas contains one or more Experiment Paths components, deleting components could invalidate the results of this component.

Stopping Canvases

Stopping a Canvas will not exit users who are waiting in a step. If you re-enable the Canvas and the users are still waiting, they will complete the step and move onto the next component. However, if the time that the user should’ve progressed to the next component has passed, they will instead exit the Canvas.

For example, let’s say you have a Canvas created using the Canvas Flow workflow set to launch at 2 pm with one variant with two steps: a Delay component with a one hour delay that goes into a Message step.

A user enters this Canvas at 2:01 pm and enters the Delay component at the same time. This means the user will be scheduled to move on to the next step of the user journey (the Message component) at 3:01 pm. If you stop the Canvas at 2:30 pm and re-enable the Canvas at 3:30 pm, the user will exit the Canvas since it’s after 3:01 pm. However, if you re-enable the Canvas at 2:40 pm, the user will move on to the Message component as expected at 3:01 pm.

  Edit this page on GitHub
WAS THIS PAGE HELPFUL?
New Stuff!