What is Join Paths in Automation?

The "Join Paths" action step in the automation designer can be used to converge two branches of a workflow after a condition evaluation. Using this step will save you precious time when building automations because it will alleviate the need to create separate, identical paths after the condition. Find the new option under the Actions section in the automation designer:

When to use it

Join Paths would be useful when an automation branches into Yes / No paths after a condition evaluation - whether evaluating activity, categories, or data - but you want to send the same content to both audiences going forward.  Consider this example:

Your automation evaluates contact data at a point in the workflow and sends two different emails based on the contact data. After the evaluation and sending of the two versions of the email, the rest of the steps in the workflow are the same. 

Adding the Join Paths step (seen above) can bring the paths back together and eliminate the need to build two separate paths that contain the same content and steps.

Notes

1. Join Paths can be placed at the end of a workflow only, it cannot be placed in the middle. It also must be placed before the Stop step, if one exists.
   
   
2. Adding a Join Paths step to an automation does not move contacts from one step to another. It will only join two paths together to move as one audience going forward.
   
   
3. Join Path cannot be placed in an already scheduled or running automation workflow. The running automation can be stopped, and a new branch can be added or the existing steps of the path can be removed and replaced, but Join Paths cannot be added to a path that already existed. 
   
   
4. Editing a Join Paths step will highlight possible join options in green and not possible join options in red. And, other steps may be greyed out. This is intended to keep you from creating an infinite loop.
   
   
5. Join Paths steps cannot be used to loop contacts to other steps.