A Flow is a multi-step experience in your product, such as a product tour, an onboarding walkthrough or a feature announcement. This article takes you from a new Flow to a published one in the Flows 2.0 builder.

Editing an older Flow? That uses the legacy builder. See Build a legacy Flow. For mobile apps, see Build mobile Flows.

Also known as: product tour, walkthrough, onboarding Flow, new Flow.

Before you start

• Install Appcues on your application. You can build and preview without it, but you can't publish. See Install Appcues.
• Install the Appcues Chrome extension to build on top of your own pages. You need it to place Tooltips. Without it, you build in the Appcues App.

Start a Flow in the App

1. Click Experiences > New experience.
2. If you see What platform are you building for?, click Web. This question only appears when your account also has mobile apps.
3. Under Pick an experience type, click Flow.
4. Enter a Name. Only your team sees it.
5. Under Where will this experience show?, enter the URL of a page in your app. The builder opens on this page. The field starts with the last URL your account used. This URL doesn't decide where the Flow appears for users. You set that in the Flow's settings after you build it.
6. To add the Flow to a campaign, choose a Campaign Tactic. This is optional.
7. Click Continue. With the Chrome extension installed, the builder opens in the extension on your page. Without it, the builder opens on the Flow's Design tab in the Appcues App.

Start a Flow from the Chrome extension

1. Go to the page in your app where you want to build.
2. Click the Appcues extension icon in your browser toolbar. What would you like to do today? opens.
3. Click Work on a Flow. Which type of Flow would you like to use? opens.
4. Click Modern. The Flows 2.0 builder opens on your page. Legacy opens the older builder. See Build a legacy Flow.

Add steps

1. Choose the type of the first step:
2. Modal: floating content for announcements, welcome messages and onboarding.
3. Tooltip: points at an element on the page, for feature callouts and guided walkthroughs.
4. For a Tooltip, click the element it should point at. The builder anchors the step to that element.
5. Add text, images and buttons to the step. See Design content in the experience builder and Design step layouts.
6. To add another step, click + in the step bar at the bottom of the builder and choose Modal or Tooltip. You can mix both in one Flow.
7. If the next step is on a different page, set a navigation action on it. See Build a Flow across pages.

For step settings, Tooltip targeting, themes and localization, see Build Flows 2.0 Experiences.

Preview the Flow

In the App, open More actions and click Preview. When a step is selected, you can also choose Preview from current step.

Preview shows the design on your page. It doesn't check who the Flow targets. To test targeting, see Preview and test Flows.

Set who sees it, then publish

Open the Flow's Settings tab in the Appcues App. Set who sees the Flow, the pages it appears on, what triggers it, how often it shows and its priority. See Configure an experience's settings.

Click Publish. The Flow goes live for users who match its settings. See Publish, schedule, and unpublish an experience.

After publishing, edits stay in a draft until you click Push changes.

Confirm it worked

• Visit a page the Flow targets, as a user who matches its audience. The Flow appears.
• Open the Flow's Analytics tab. Users who saw it appear there.

If the Flow doesn't appear

• Open the Appcues debugger and confirm every row shows a green checkmark.
• In Audiences > Users, open the user's Eligibility tab to see whether they qualify. See Find and inspect users.
• On the Flow's Settings tab, click Test URL targeting to check the page matches.
• If the Flow shows once and you already saw it, test with a permalink or Test mode.
• See Troubleshoot Flows for the full checklist.

If it still doesn't show, contact support with the Flow's URL from the Settings tab, its Experience ID from Who changed this, the user's ID, the page URL and a screenshot.