Preview a Flow, Embed, Banner, Pin, Checklist, Launchpad, or NPS survey to check how it looks, then test it live with your team before it reaches your users. This covers web experiences. For mobile, see Preview Mobile Flows.

Choose a method

Preview, Permalinks, and Test links don't check page or audience rules, frequency, or triggers. To check those, publish to staging or to internal testers.

Preview while you build

Where you preview depends on the experience type:

For Flows and Embeds, select a step in the Design tab first to get Preview from current step next to Preview from beginning.

Preview doesn't show:

• User property personalization. Variables such as {{name}} don't fill in.
• Linked Flows. Only the current Flow plays.
• Flow lists in a Launchpad. The Flow list block shows "Nothing to see here at the moment" in preview. Links blocks do show.

Show a live Flow with a Permalink

A Permalink is a link that shows a published Flow to whoever opens it, whatever the Flow's targeting says. Use it to check a live Flow in your app, or to send it to someone directly.

1. Click Experiences and find the Flow. It must be published and have a Build URL.
2. Open the Flow's menu and click Permalink. The link is copied to your clipboard.
3. Open the link while signed in to your app. The Flow shows on the Build URL page.

The Permalink is the Build URL with appcue=<Flow ID> added. To start on another page, change the domain and path but keep the appcue parameter.

Anyone with a Permalink sees the Flow, as many times as they open it. Only share it with people you intend to show the Flow to.

NPS surveys work the same way, though the App doesn't build the link for you. Add appcue=<survey ID> to any page URL in your app, using ? if the URL has no query string and & if it does. The survey must be published.

Share a legacy Flow with a Test link

Test links are for legacy Flows only. A Test link shows the current draft, so teammates can review it before you publish.

1. Open the legacy Flow's Settings tab.
2. Click More actions (⋯) > Test. A Test link appears.
3. Copy the link and share it. Teammates need access to your app's page, not an Appcues account.

A Test link ignores audience, frequency, and trigger rules, so the Flow shows every time. Test views and form submissions aren't counted in the Flow's analytics.

If you see Add a Build URL to test this flow, add a Build URL in the Flow's settings first. If you see Build URL doesn't match page targeting, the link opens a page the Flow isn't targeted to; click Continue to test to use it anyway.

Publish to a staging domain

This is the most complete test. Targeting, frequency, user properties, and several experiences on one page all behave as they will in production.

1. Add your staging domain if it isn't connected yet. See Manage connected domains.
2. Open the experience's Settings tab. In Where this appears, choose Only the domains I choose and tick only your staging domain.
3. Publish the experience. See Publish, schedule, and unpublish an experience.
4. Sign in to your staging site as a user who matches Who sees this, and walk through the experience.
5. When you're done, tick your production domain in Where this appears and push the changes.

Publish to internal testers

1. If you don't have a staging site, publish to production with an audience that only includes your team.
2. In Who sees this on the Settings tab, add a rule that only your team matches: for example, email contains @yourcompany.com, a segment of testers, or your own User ID. The Appcues debugger shows your User ID.
3. Publish the experience.
4. Sign in to your app as one of the testers and walk through the experience.
5. When you're done, switch Who sees this to the real audience and push the changes.

For an NPS survey, set the sampling to 100% while you test so the survey shows straight away, then set it back before launch.

Check who qualifies

To see whether a specific user qualifies for the experience, and which rule stops them:

1. Click Audiences > Users and open the user. See Find and inspect users.
2. Open the Eligibility tab. Enter the page in Page URL and click Check page.
3. If the experience shows Not eligible, click See why.

Test again from the start

After you've seen a Show once experience, completed a Checklist, or answered a survey, it won't show again for your user. You have three options:

• Use a new test user. Sign in with a user ID you haven't tested with.
• Use a Permalink for a Flow. It ignores frequency.
• Reset the user's profile. In Audiences > Users, open the user, click ⋮, then Reset profile. This deletes the whole profile: all experience history, events, and properties, for every experience. It can't be undone, and only Admins and Publishers can do it. The profile is recreated the next time your app identifies the user.

There's no way to reset one experience's history on its own.

If something isn't working during testing

The experience doesn't appear after publishing. Open the Appcues debugger and check that every row has a green checkmark. Then check you're on the domain you published to: a common mix-up is publishing to staging and testing on production. Use the Eligibility tab to find the rule that fails.

It doesn't appear after a profile reset. Reload the page, since the profile is recreated on the next identify. Reset also clears properties, so property-based rules won't match until your app sends the properties again.

Personalization shows raw curly braces. The property name in the content, such as {{name}}, doesn't match what your app sends. Check the exact name and casing in the debugger.

A button or Checklist item doesn't launch a Flow. Check that the Flow is published. If its first step is a Tooltip, the target element has to be on the page; send the user to the right page first.

It works with a Permalink or Test link but not when published. Those links skip targeting. Check Who sees this, Where this appears, and the frequency settings.

Linked Flows don't play. Preview, Permalinks, and Test links show a single Flow. Publish all the Flows in the sequence to test it.

Still stuck?

Collect the following and contact support:

• The experience's URL, copied from your browser's address bar on its Settings tab, and its Experience ID from Who changed this. For a Checklist, the Checklist page's URL.
• The test user's User ID.
• The page URL where you're testing.
• The method you used: Preview, Permalink, Test link, staging, or internal testers.
• A screenshot of the debugger and of the user's Eligibility tab.