Pause Workflows During Holidays and Blackout Dates

Holiday weekends, closures, and seasonal breaks are bad times for automated messages. The Pause Workflow setting lets you freeze chosen workflows for a date range without turning them off or rebuilding them.

Open the setting

1. Go to Automation and open Global Workflow Settings. You can also reach it from Settings > Automation.
2. Scroll to Pause Workflow.

Create a pause window

1. Click Start Date and Time and choose the beginning and end, then click Confirm.
2. Click Select Workflows and choose one, several, or All Published Workflows. Only published workflows appear.
3. Click Add Date to create additional windows. You can have up to 15.
4. Tick Annually on a row to repeat the same dates every year.
5. Use the clone icon to copy a row or the delete icon to remove it.
6. Save your changes.

What a paused workflow does

• Paused workflows show a Paused status on the workflow list.
• Each workflow's Settings has a Pause Workflow section showing its pause dates, with a link back to the global settings.
• Contacts still enter during a pause. They move through Wait and If/Else steps, but any other action holds until the pause ends.
• When the window closes, workflows resume automatically.

Rules to remember

• A single window can span no more than 15 days.
• A workflow cannot belong to two overlapping windows.
• Resume happens on its own, so no extra steps are needed as long as your settings were saved.

Planning ideas

• Pause promotional follow-ups over a public holiday.
• Hold reminder texts while your office is closed.
• Keep critical workflows, such as payment receipts, unpaused by leaving them out of the list.

Good to know: Because contacts keep entering, expect a burst of messages when the pause ends; stagger the restart with a Wait step if volume is a concern.