Creating a Sequence
Find your way around the sequences list and the editor, and set a sequence's name, delivery, sender, and exit criteria.
What the editor saves today. A sequence's name, description, delivery settings, sender, and exit criteria save as you set them. Its steps are shown read-only: writing a step, adding or deleting one, and changing the start delay or a wait arrive with the campaigns engine, along with publishing, enabling, and enrolling. Every section below says which half of it you can use now.
The Sequences List
Campaigns → Sequences lists every sequence in your organization, with its recipient count, status, who created it, and when it was last published.
The toolbar above the table:
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Search | Filters the list by sequence name |
| Sort | Name, Recipients, Status, Creation date, or Last published — ascending or descending |
| Filter | Opens a Status submenu — All, Enabled, Paused, Draft, or Archived. All clears the filter |
| View settings | Group by Folder, Status, or nothing; show or hide the favorites strip; show or hide archived sequences |
| New folder | Creates a shared folder |
| New sequence | Creates a draft and opens it |
Each row carries a status pill:
- Draft — never published, so it has not started
- Enabled — published and running
- Paused — published, but not sending
- Archived — retired, and everyone still mid-run is ended; hidden from the table until you ask for it in View settings or filter to Archived. A favorited sequence stays in the Favorites band even while archived, so a star is never lost out of sight.
Creating, editing, publishing, enabling, and enrolling all require organization administrator access. Everyone else can open the sequences list and read a sequence, but the editor is read-only for them and the row menus, New folder, and New sequence do not appear.
Folders and Favorites
Folders are shared by the whole organization. Everyone sees the same folders, and a sequence sits in at most one of them (or is Unfiled). Deleting a folder never deletes a sequence — its sequences simply become unfiled.
Favorites are yours alone. Starring a sequence pins it to the strip at the top of your list and never affects what anyone else sees.
The row's ⋮ menu handles filing (Move to folder), status (Enable, Pause, Archive, Unarchive), and Delete. Move to folder and Delete work on any sequence. The status items work on the sequences Parable ships with; on one your team wrote they are inert and say why when you point at them, because changing a sequence's status arrives with the campaigns engine. Unarchive brings a sequence back Paused, so it does not start sending again the moment it reappears. Duplicate sequence is inactive on every row.
Deleting a sequence is permanent and takes its steps, its enrolments, and its statistics with it. Parable refuses to delete a sequence that is still enabled or that still has people mid-run. Archiving ends those runs; pausing only holds them, so a paused sequence with people in it still cannot be deleted.
Creating One
New sequence creates a draft called Untitled Sequence and opens the editor straight away. The new draft starts with:
- a manual trigger — you choose who is enrolled
- enter once — a person can be enrolled a single time
- a 09:00–17:00 sending window in your organization's timezone, or US Central if your organization has not set one
- Business days only switched on
- an empty Step 1, shown so you can see the shape of what is coming, and no exit criteria
The editor saves the name, description, delivery settings, sender, and exit criteria. It shows the steps, the trigger, and the re-entry rule without changing them. New sequence always creates a manual, enter-once sequence — see Enrolling people.
The Editor
The editor has three tabs.
The steps, the waits between them, and the settings rail
Who is in the sequence and what has happened to them
Sender name and reply-to for this sequence
Along the top sit the sequence name, a star to favorite it, an Enroll recipients button, and an Enable toggle. Both are inert on a sequence your team wrote: enabling and enrolling arrive with the campaigns engine, and each control carries the reason when you point at it. Enrolments run the published sequence in any case, so a sequence has to be published once before anyone can be enrolled in it.
The Rail
The right-hand rail holds everything that applies to the whole sequence:
- Name and description — the description is for your team, not congregants
- Enrollment — the trigger this sequence uses, and whether a person can enter more than once
- Delivery — the sending window, its timezone, and Business days only
- Email — sender name, reply-to, and the unsubscribe-link wording
- Exit criteria — the conditions that end a person's run early
- Helpful resources — a link back to these pages
Delivery, Email, and Exit criteria are covered in Delivery and exit.
Email Steps
The step document is read-only. The start delay, each step card, and the waits between them are all drawn, and none of them takes an edit yet — writing a step arrives with the campaigns engine. What a step is made of does not change, so it is worth knowing before you plan one.
Each step card is one email: a Subject line and a body.
The subject must be a single line. The body supports a deliberately small set of formatting, because it has to render the same way in every mail client:
| Formatting | How to apply it |
|---|---|
| Bold | Select text, then the B button |
| Italic | Select text, then the I button |
| Select text, then the S button | |
| Muted text | Select text, then Text, then the grey swatch. Use it for an aside or a sign-off that should sit back from the message |
| Links | Select text, then the link button, type the address, and press Enter. church.example/give becomes https://church.example/give; anything that is not an http:// or https:// address is refused |
| Paragraphs and line breaks | Type them |
That is the whole list. Headings, bullet lists, tables, images, and attachments are not supported — the attachment, image, and Draft with AI buttons sit on the step toolbar and are inactive. Anything else pasted in arrives as plain text.
Merge Fields
The {x} button on a step's toolbar inserts a merge field, and typing { in
the body opens the same menu at the cursor. Four are available, and only these
four:
| Field | Resolves to | If it is missing |
|---|---|---|
{{first_name}} | The person's first name | Falls back to there |
{{last_name}} | The person's surname | Renders as nothing |
{{church_name}} | Your organization's name | Renders as nothing |
{{sender_name}} | The sender name set for this sequence | Falls back to your church name |
Use the menu rather than typing a field out by hand: an inserted merge field is a single chip you can select or delete in one go, and the menu only ever offers names the email renderer accepts.
Waits and the Start Delay
Above the first step is the Start pill: Start immediately after enrollment, or Start after N …. Between every pair of steps is a Wait pill. Both are shown on the read-only document and neither takes a change yet.
Both take a number and a unit — hours, days, or business days. A wait between steps is at least 1. Setting the start delay back to 0 returns it to immediately.
Business days means Monday to Friday. Business days as a wait unit is separate from the Business days only delivery switch: the first counts the gap between two steps, the second is the sequence's own record of which days it is meant to send on. See Delivery and exit.
Adding and Deleting Steps
Adding and deleting steps arrive with the campaigns engine. While the document is read-only the step ⋮ menu and the Add step to sequence button at the foot of the document are not drawn at all, so the editor never offers an action that could only fail.
When they arrive, a step's ⋮ menu will carry Add step before, Add step after, Send test to me, and Delete step, and Add step to sequence will append one to the end. Reordering is not part of the editor: a step is added where you want it.
Sending a Test
Send test to me sits on a step's ⋮ menu, which a read-only document does not draw, so sending yourself a test arrives with step editing. It sends that one step to your own address so you can check how the subject, the formatting, and the merge fields land in a real inbox, and it is rate-limited for the whole organization — about a minute between tests, whoever sent the last one.
A test renders with your organization's real values, so {{first_name}} shows
your first name rather than a placeholder.
Publishing
Your edits save as you work, but they save to a draft. Publishing is the separate, deliberate step that puts the current draft in front of congregants, and it arrives with the campaigns engine. A sequence has to be published once before anyone can be enrolled in it.
A blue band sits above the document whenever the draft and the published version differ:
- This sequence has not yet been published — with Publish sequence
- This sequence has unpublished changes — with Discard changes and Publish changes
Publish sequence, Publish changes, and Discard changes are drawn disabled and carry the reason when you point at them. Nothing you have written is at risk while they wait: the draft is what the editor saves to.
Publish changes will replace the published version with what is in the draft. Discard changes will throw away everything you have changed since the last publish, and cannot be undone.
Publishing is not a new copy for new people. Parable reads the sequence as it stands when a person's next step comes due, so a change you publish reaches everyone still in the sequence from their next step onwards — not only the people enrolled after it. Steps someone has already been sent are unaffected.
New sequence on the list creates a draft and opens it.
Name and description, sending window, sender name and reply-to, and exit criteria. These save as you set them.
The start delay, the steps, and the waits between them are shown read-only.
All four arrive with the campaigns engine — see Enrolling people.