Tutorials: General Flow Information

Required access: Voxtelesys Portal Access

Table of Contents

• About the Flow
• Navigation
• Executing a Flow
• Adding Widgets
• Connecting Widgets
• Editing Widget Properties
• Removing Widgets and Edges
• Handling Invalid Widgets
• Publishing a Flows
• Managing Versions
• Advanced Usage

*Disclaimer: You will need to have Voice API enabled on your account to do this you will need to open a ticket with support. VAST flow builder is still in BETA please keep this in mind are you create your flow.

Last Updated:9/16/24

The Voxtelesys Flow Builder is an intuitive, low/no-code user interface for building and managing communication flows. It enables everyone, even those who lack a technical background, to design sophisticated customer interactions without writing a single line of code.

With the Flow Builder, you can:

• Design communication flows to be executed when an inbound or outbound call is created
• Drag and drop a variety of widgets onto the Flow to create tailored customer experiences
• Integrate with a variety of services, such as recordings and SMS messages
• Set variables for dynamically populating fields such as text-to-speech
• Control the steps of a Flow using conditional statements
• Manage and deploy versions of a Flow

Billing

Every time your Flow is executed, your account will be billed for one Flow execution. For inbound calls using your Flow, these charges will be associated with the service trunk group of the Voice API Profile that was utilized. For outbound calls using a Flow, the charges will be associated with the service trunk group of the API token used for HTTP requests to the Voice API. See our pricing page for more details.

Using the Toolbar

The top toolbar on the Flow Builder, shown below, has a multitude of convenient tools to help navigate your workspace. From left to right, these tools include:

• Zoom in: zooms into the workspace
• Zoom out: zooms out from the workspace
• Fit view: fits all nodes into the window
• Lock/Unlock: toggles the workspace as read-only
• Help: provides links to additional resources

Editing the Flow Title

In the middle of the top toolbar, the title of the Flow is displayed. To change the title of your Flow, click on the title and it will become editable.

Saving your Flow

When you are editing your Flow, all changes are made to the current workspace. Each change to the current workspace is automatically saved, so there is no need to manually save your changes. Even though your current workspace is saved automatically, your Flow is not able to be used in production until a version has been published.

When you create a new Flow from scratch, the workspace is automatically populated with one widget: the Start widget. This widget is the starting point for all executions using your Flow. A Flow can be executed from any the following events:

An inbound call is received on a number associated with the Flow An outbound call is created using the Voice API

Each of these events has a corresponding output on the Start widget, which is displayed below:

Inbound Calls

An inbound call is a call whose destination is one of the numbers you own at Voxtelesys. To execute a Flow when one of your inbound numbers is called, all you need to do is set up routing to a Voice API Profile that is associated with your Flow. For more information on this process, see our Assign Inbound Flow tutorial. Once you have inbound routing to your Flow set up, simply connect a widget to “Inbound Call” on the Start Node and it will be executed when an inbound call is created.

Outbound Calls

A Flow can also be executed when an outbound call is programmatically created using our Voice API. To execute a Flow on an outbound call, you can send the GUID of your Flow in the body of the Voice API request. For more information on the Voice API, see our Voice API documentation. The widget that is connected to “Outbound Call” on the Start Node will be executed when an outbound call is created.

Using the Widget Library

Every Flow is composed of widgets that are connected by edges, and each widget contains an action to be executed in the communication flow. The available widgets are displayed in the Widget Library on the left sidebar in the Flow Builder, shown below. To add a widget to your Flow, all you need to do is drag a widget from the Widget Library onto the workspace. For more details on the available widgets, see the Widget Library tutorial .

Once you have added a widget to the workspace, you can connect it to another widget by clicking and dragging a handle on the right side of the starting widget to the handle on the left side of the destination widget. Shown below is an example of the Answer Call widget connected to the Start widget.

Several widgets have configuration options that can be used to customize communication flows. For example, the Say Text widget allows you to define the language, voice, text, and number of loops when playing audio created from text-to-speech (see below). To edit the properties of a widget, click on a widget in the workspace to open the right sidebar with the widget’s settings. In the right sidebar, you can edit the widget’s name, configure its properties, delete the widget, and add conditions (where applicable).

Sometimes a widget is no longer needed, or two widgets should no longer be connected. To remove an edge or widget, simply hover over it in the workspace. A trash can icon should appear as shown below, and if you click the icon, the edge or widget will be removed. Alternatively, you can press the backspace key while hovering over a selected widget to remove it.

In order for a Flow to be fully functional, each widget must be properly configured. If a widget has an invalid configuration, it will appear with an “Invalid Settings” tag, as shown below. In addition, the “Warnings” button on the top toolbar displays a convenient summary of the widgets that are invalid in a Flow. Before publishing your Flow, be sure to correct all of the invalid widgets so that your Flow can work as expected.

Once you have added widgets to your Flow and properly configured their properties, you can now publish your Flow for real-world use. When you publish a Flow, a new version of the Flow is created using the current workspace. A version is a read-only snapshot of your Flow that can be used in production. A Flow can have several versions, but only one of them can be live. The live version of a Flow is the version that is used for all future executions of the Flow.

To publish a Flow, simply click the “Publish” button on the top toolbar. In the modal that appears, you will be given the option to set the name of the new version and choose whether the new version should immediately become the live version.

• Please note that your account is limited to 25 versions across all Flows, and you will not be able to publish a new version if you have reached this limit. If you require more versions, please contact support to request an increase in your limit.

In the “Version History” tab on the left sidebar, you can see all of the published versions of your Flow. The Version History is where you can view, edit, and delete these versions. In addition, to set a different version as the live version of your Flow, simply click the broadcast button next to the version you want to become live.

Viewing a Previous Version

To view a previous version, you can click on the version and it will be displayed in a read-only state, as shown below. Versions cannot be edited. If you wish to make changes to a version, you can load it into the current workspace by pressing “Set as Current Workspace”.

Please note that loading a version into the current workspace will completely overwrite the contents of the current workspace. If you want to return to the current workspace without loading a previous version, simply click “Current Workspace” in the Version History and you will be able to resume editing your Flow.

Liquid Variable Templating

The Flow Builder allows the Liquid Templating to be used in several widget properties. Liquid Templating provides the ability to dynamically configure widget properties based on variables previously set in the Flow. For example, the text in Say Text allows variables to be interpolated using Liquid Templating, as shown below. To interpolate variables using Liquid Templating, type “{{“ and a list of available variables will be displayed.

Importing and Exporting JSON

Every Flow can be represented in JSON format. To view the JSON for a Flow, click the “Edit JSON” button on the top toolbar. If you want to export the Flow as JSON, click the “Copy” button in the bottom of the modal that appears. Otherwise, if you want to import the JSON of an existing flow, you can paste the JSON into the modal and press “Save”.

Please note that, if the JSON is invalid, then you will not be able to save until the validation errors have been corrected.