Tayon Help

Publish a flow and check it works

Save and publish are two different things — and since there is no simulator, here is how to actually try a flow once it is live.

Two buttons in the designer header, and the difference between them is the single most common source of “my change did not work”.

Button What it does
Save Flow Stores your work. Nobody else sees any of it.
Publish Copies the saved work to the live version people actually use.

Saving is not publishing. A flow can be perfectly saved and completely invisible.

  1. Save Flow. Wait for the status panel to read All changes saved.
  2. Publish.
  3. Confirm.
  4. Open the live version and click through it.

Changes go live immediately. There is no scheduling and no approval step.

Save Flow and Publish in the designer header
Save Flow and Publish in the designer header

#Publishing a conversational form

The confirmation tells you the exact address the site is about to go live at. Read it — it is your last chance to notice you are publishing over the wrong one.

If that address is already used by another site, publishing stops and says so. Change the address under Settings and publish again.

Afterwards, Preview Flow in the header opens the live page in a new tab.

#Publishing a bot flow

Same button, same immediacy. There is no preview button here, because a bot flow has no page of its own — how you try it depends on the channel.

#Web Bot

Publish, then open the flow’s bot page or the widget on your site and start a chat. Bot pages are listed under Automation → Bot Links, each with a public address you can open in a new tab.

AutomationBot Links

Open it in a private window. That guarantees you get a fresh conversation instead of one you started earlier.

#WhatsApp

Publish, make sure the number is connected, then message it from a different phone. The flow starts according to its trigger.

To go again from the beginning, send RESTART SESSION as a message. That clears your conversation state so the flow starts over — without it you will keep landing in the middle of the conversation you already had.

#AI Agent

There is nothing to open, so testing means giving the agent something to do:

  1. Publish the flow.
  2. Create a lead in your CRM.
  3. Assign that lead to the AI Agent member the flow uses.
  4. Wait.

#What the designer does not check for you

There is no validation step before publishing. Nothing warns you about:

  • A split with an empty branch
  • A step with no question and no content
  • An action pointing at a step you have since deleted
  • A message with a variable name that does not match any question

All of those publish happily and fail quietly in front of a visitor. Clicking through the live version yourself is the only check there is.

The one exception: if a flow has steps that are missing their content entirely, the designer refuses to save or publish it and says so. That is a data problem, not a design problem — contact support rather than trying to work around it.

#A test run worth doing

Before you send anyone real:

  1. Publish, and open the live version in a private window.
  2. Answer as an ideal customer. Check every screen, every button, every bit of personalised text.
  3. Do it again as someone who fails your qualifying questions. This is the run people skip, and it is where empty branches turn up.
  4. Answer nonsense in every field to see whether your validation catches it.
  5. Check what arrived: the lead in your CRM, the notification email, the tag.
  6. If you use a dataset, look at the table and confirm the row landed with the right values in the right columns.

#When something is wrong on the live version

Symptom First thing to check
The change is not there Did you publish, or only save?
A variable prints as nothing Is the question before the screen that uses it, and does the identifier match exactly?
A visitor hits a dead end A split branch with nothing under it.
An email never arrives Is it delayed and addressed to someone other than the lead? That combination never sends.
A tag or stage did not apply Does Save Lead run before it?
The bot repeats itself You are resuming an old conversation. Use a private window, or send RESTART SESSION on WhatsApp.
An AI Agent flow has done nothing Give it 15 minutes, then check the lead is assigned to the right AI member.

Related articles

Find your way around the canvasAdd steps, move around the map, copy and delete boxes, and understand why you cannot drop a step just anywhere.Choose a channel for a bot flowWeb Bot, WhatsApp and AI Agent — where each one runs, and exactly which steps disappear from the palette on each.Publish and share your sitePut a conversational form live at its own address, share the link, and point a domain of your own at it.

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