While you build, your changes are saved as a draft that only you and your team see. Publishing replaces the live flow with your current draft, so customers talking to the agent start getting the new version.
Before you publish
The flow is checked as you build. Select the issues button in the editor's sub-bar to open Flow issues.
- Errors block publishing. The Publish button is disabled and its tooltip says how many to fix, for example Fix 2 errors to publish. Typical errors are a step with no message content, a question with no Saves to name, a Selection with no options, or a Handover in a flow that has no customer-message trigger.
- Warnings do not block publishing, but they are worth reading. One example is an option that is not connected to a next step.
A small dot on the Publish button means the draft has changes the live flow does not.
Publish
- 1Checks
- 2Publish
Fix any errors, then select Publish in the top bar of the flow editor.
Read the Publish this flow? dialog. It states that publishing replaces the live flow, that there is no version history and no rollback, and that the change may take a little while to reach conversations already under way.
If your Handover steps send conversations to a queue that has nobody in it, the dialog asks Who receives these conversations? Pick agents and select Add agents & publish, or select Publish without agents and conversations will wait unassigned.
Select Publish. A banner confirms the agent is published and connected to the web channel.
There is no undo for a publish
Natiq keeps one live flow per agent. Publishing overwrites it. If you want to be able to go back, keep a note of what changed or copy the steps first.
Publishing also makes sure the agent has a Web Chat line, which is why the Share tab can give you an install snippet straight away. See Share your agent.
Draft, Live and Paused
| State | Where you see it | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Draft | Agents list | The agent has never been published. |
| Live | Agents list | A flow is published. Later edits stay in the draft until you publish again. |
| Paused | Agents list, and the status beside the name in the editor, Share and Analyze | The agent is switched off. |
In the editor the status chip reads Active or Paused. The Agent Builder shows this state but does not have a pause button for the agent itself; if an agent shows as Paused, a published flow will not reach customers until it is active again.
Individual triggers can be paused on their own — a webhook or a schedule has Pause and Resume in its panel. See Webhook and schedule triggers.
After you publish
- Test it with Preview. See Test your agent.
- Put it on your website or another channel from the Share tab.
- Watch how it does in the Analyze tab. Analytics follow the published flow, and the Flow tab tells you when the draft has changes that are not live yet.
If you edit while it is live
Your edits autosave to the draft and do not touch the live flow. If the editor shows This flow changed somewhere else. — for example the assistant or a teammate saved a newer draft — choose Reload before publishing. Publishing stops if the draft changed under you, rather than putting an older flow live.