How do I start a contact at a specific point in an automation?

You can use the Goal action to add contacts to a specific point in your automation, without having them go through each preceding action. 

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Example use case

Let's say a contact completed your automation before you finished adding actions to it. You want to ensure that your contact goes through the remaining steps in your workflow, but skip over the actions they already went through.

To achieve this, you can add a Goal action right above the steps you want that contact(s) to complete. This goal should use a condition that the contact can meet. Then, when you add the contact back into the automation, the Goal action will pull the contact to it, like a magnet. Then the contact will complete the rest of the steps in your workflow. Learn more about how the Goal action works. 

For this example, we will use a tag as a condition for the Goal, add the tag to the contact, then manually add the contact to the automation. 

Part 1: Configure the Goal action

In this section, we will show you how to configure the Goal action that uses a "Tag Exists" condition. 

1. From your automation, click "Conditions and Workflow" then drag the Goal action to your automation.
2. A modal window will appear. Type the name of the goal into the field provided. 
3. Click the "Click to add a goal" link. Create your goal conditions using the segmenting tool, then click "Save." In our example, we will use "Tag Exists" and specify the tag.
   
   
4. You will be redirected back to the previous modal where you can continue the configuration of your Goal action.
5. For "And when the goal is:" make sure that "Below the contact's position" is selected.
6. For "Trigger this conversion when this goal is achieved," make sure "None" is selected. 
7. For "If the contact does not meet the goal conditions," make sure "Continue anyway" is selected.
8. Click the "Save" button. 

Part 2: Tag the contact and add them to the automation

After configuring the Goal action, it's time to add the tag to the contact, then add the contact to your automation. You'll want to apply the same tag that you used in the Goal condition. 

1. Locate the contact you want to add to your automation and open their profile record. 
2. Add the same tag used in the Goal to the contact.
3. Manually add the contact to the automation. To do so, click "+ Add" in the Automations section of the contact's record.
4. A modal window will appear. Select the automation to which you want to add the contact then click "Okay."

As soon as the contact is manually added to the automation, they will jump from the manual add trigger to the Goal action you created.

You can view the contact's automation path right from the contact profile page. To do so, click the automation name you added them to. A modal window will appear. Click the "View" button.