Pause, resume and cancel a cadence inside a flow

Overview

Inside the flow builder you can act on the contact's cadence without leaving the flow: enroll, pause, resume, skip step and cancel.

These actions used to require you to manually pick which follow-up sequence should be affected — something the operator almost never knows while building the flow (whoever replies on WhatsApp could be in any cadence). The sequence field is now optional: leave it blank and the action works on the enrollment behind that conversation — the one that triggered the flow.

Along with that, a bigger and silent problem was fixed: the lookup only looked at the conversation. An enrollment created from a CRM deal, a charge, an import or the contact page is born with no conversation attached — so it was invisible to the action, which simply did nothing and said nothing. Today, when there is no enrollment on the conversation, the action looks for the enrollment of the triggering contact.

Prerequisites

• The Follow-up module enabled on the account.
• A flow where you will add the action (and that you will publish at the end).
• For pause, skip step and cancel: the contact must have an in-flight enrollment (active or paused).
• For resume: the enrollment must be paused.
• For enroll: you need at least one published sequence — this is the only action where the sequence is still required.

Step by step

1. Open Automation & Flows → Flows and edit (or create) the flow.
2. Add the follow-up action you need:
   • Enroll in follow-up and Cancel follow-up have their own block in the Follow-up group.
   • Pause follow-up, Resume follow-up and Skip follow-up step appear in the action list of the generic action block.
3. In the sequence field, leave it blank (recommended): the action will act on the enrollment behind that conversation.
4. Pick a sequence only when you want to narrow the action down to one specific cadence.
5. Publish the flow and check the run to confirm the action was applied.

Settings & options

The five actions and the sequence field

How the action finds the enrollment (lookup order)

With the sequence field blank, the action searches in this order and stops at the first match:

Picking a sequence does not change the order — it only filters the lookup. If the in-flight enrollment belongs to another sequence, it will no longer be found.

When to leave it blank and when to pick one

• Leave it blank (almost always): you want to act on "the cadence this person is receiving right now", without knowing which one it is. This is what operators expect.
• Pick a sequence: when the flow must touch only one specific cadence and ignore the rest — for example, pause only the billing cadence and let the welcome one keep running.

Account with no sequences yet

If the account has no sequence created, the picker shows up empty — and that does not block you: pause, resume, skip step and cancel are still valid when blank (they just will not find anything until enrollments exist). Enroll, on the other hand, needs a published sequence; create and publish one under Follow-up → Sequences.

Same rule in automations and macros

These same five actions exist in automation rules and macros, with the same lookup order. What you learn here applies in all three places.

Use cases

• The customer replied mid-cadence: the service flow pauses the cadence so the contact does not keep receiving automated messages while talking to a human.
• Payment confirmed: the flow cancels that contact's billing cadence — even when the enrollment was created from the charge rather than from a conversation.
• Conversation closed unresolved: the flow resumes the cadence that was paused.
• Redundant step: the contact already gave the information the next step would ask for, so the flow uses skip step.
• Enrollment from the CRM: someone was enrolled from a deal; when that person replies, the flow can still pause the cadence even without a conversation link.

Tips, limits & best practices

• Honest limit — more than one active enrollment: if the contact is in several cadences at the same time, the action applies to the conversation's enrollment; failing that, to the triggering contact's most recent one. It never sweeps the whole account and never acts on several enrollments at once. Need a specific cadence? Pick the sequence in the field.
• Finding nothing is not an error: with no enrollment, the action does nothing and the flow continues. The reason is recorded in the run — check there before blaming the flow.
• Resume only works on paused: an active enrollment is not "resumed", and a canceled or completed one does not come back.
• Pause does not end it: to end it for good, use cancel.
• No contact, no action: a flow running with no conversation and no contact has nobody to act on. That is deliberate — the alternative would be touching someone else's cadence.
• Test with a real contact before publishing for everyone: run the flow and check the enrollment state in the enrollments panel.

Troubleshooting

• The action does nothing and nothing shows up: there is probably no in-flight enrollment for that contact. Check in the enrollments panel whether the state is active or paused — completed, canceled or "exited" are not reachable.
• It worked before I picked the sequence: picking a sequence narrows the lookup. If the in-flight enrollment belongs to another cadence, it is no longer found. Set the field back to blank.
• The sequence picker is empty: the account has no sequence yet. For pause, resume, skip and cancel, leave it blank; for enroll, create and publish a sequence first.
• Resume does not resume: it only works on a paused enrollment. Check the current state.
• It paused the wrong cadence: the contact had more than one active enrollment and the action took the conversation's one (or the contact's most recent). Set the sequence explicitly in the field.
• No follow-up action shows in the editor: the Follow-up module is disabled on this account — ask an administrator to enable it.
• The sequence I picked disappeared: it was deleted or unpublished. Pick another one or leave the field blank.

See also

• Managing enrollments in the inbox and in the enrollments panel
• Enrollment: manual, by automation, by event and by inactivity
• Integrations: follow-up automations, events and webhooks
• Cadence funnel and exit rules