How do I start a group of customers partway through the journey?

When you turn on a customer journey, every customer you already have starts at its first stage. Some of them are really further along, for example a client who is already on their third weekly session. Start at journey stage moves a group of them to the stage they are actually at, in one go. Only your organization's admin can do this, and it appears once your team management is on and your journey is set up.

Start customers at a stage

1. Go to Contacts and tick the checkbox next to each customer you want to move. You can select up to 100 at a time.
2. In the toolbar that appears, click Start at journey stage.
3. Choose the stage from the list. Each entry shows the stage's name, which session it is for a repeating stage, like Weekly session (3 of 12), and how many jobs it has.
4. Click the button that names how many customers you selected, for example Start 12 customers. A summary appears when it is done.

For each customer, the open jobs of the stage they were in are cancelled, and every job of the stage you chose is created for them at once, with its due date, ready for your team to work. The customer's stage on their profile moves to the chosen stage straight away. Any automation set to run when a customer enters that stage runs then too.

If one of those automations sends the customer a message, for example a milestone email, the window tells you so as soon as you pick the stage, with how many customers you selected, before you confirm. There is no way to move them without it from here: to skip the message, switch that automation off on the Automations tab first, then switch it back on afterwards. A customer who has unsubscribed is not sent it, and nobody gets the same step's message twice.

If a team member had a timer running on one of the cancelled jobs, that timer is stopped at that moment.

It only moves customers forward

Start at journey stage never moves anyone backwards, and it never reopens a job that is already finished. A customer who is already at the stage you chose, or further on, is left exactly where they are. The summary tells you how many that was.

There is no undo. If you picked a stage that was too early, run it again with the later stage. If you picked one too far ahead, the customers stay there.

Who is left out, and why

The summary lists anyone who was not moved:

• Already there or further on. They are at that stage already, or past it, so nothing changed for them.
• No phone or email. The journey only runs for customers you can reach. Add a phone number or email to their contact, then try again.
• Could not be found. The contact was deleted or merged into another one after you opened the list.
• Nothing left to start. Every job from the stage you chose to the end of the journey is skipped for them, so there is nothing to create. They stay at the stage they are in now, which may be an earlier one, and their open jobs are not cancelled.
• Follows their service's journey. Start at journey stage moves customers along your main journey. A customer whose service has its own journey follows that one instead, so they were not moved.
• The journey changed while it ran. Someone edited the journey during the move, so that customer was put back exactly as they were. Open Start at journey stage again to move them.

If a job of the chosen stage was skipped for a customer, that job is not created for them. If every job of that stage was skipped for them, they start at the next stage that has work for them instead, and the summary says so.

If it says the stage is no longer on your journey

Someone changed the journey after you opened the list, for example removed that stage or lowered how many times it repeats. Open Start at journey stage again and pick from the updated list. Nobody was moved.