How do I check who gets which email, and when?

Sound familiar?

You've set up a date workflow and want to be sure it does what you think before anyone receives anything. Or a patient says they never got the reminder, and you want to see what happened. Or you just want to know which workflows one particular person is in, and what's coming to them next 🔍.

What's happening

There are three places to look. Each one answers a different question.

1. Preview as a joiner answers: "If someone joined right now, what would they get, and when?"
2. Who gets what, and when answers: "For everyone in this workflow, what has been sent and what is coming?"
3. The Workflows section on a contact answers: "What is this one person in, across all my workflows?"

All three read from the same schedule, so they always agree.

Why it works this way

In a date workflow, each person's schedule is worked out the moment they join. Because it's worked out in advance, you can see it in advance, with real dates. You don't have to wait and hope. That's what lets you check a webinar countdown, or answer a patient's question, in seconds 👀.

What to do now

Before you switch it on: Preview as a joiner

1. Go to Email Workflows (https://app.co-kinetic.com/email-workflows) and open your workflow with View Details →.
2. Press Preview as a joiner.
3. You'll see every email someone joining today would receive, with the real date and time of each one. Emails they would miss (for example a pinned email whose moment has already passed) are shown with the reason.
4. Use the date picker to try other join dates. Try one early, one late and one the day before your event. This is the quickest way to see squash and skip working.
5. Draft emails are included and marked as drafts, so you can check the shape of a workflow while you're still building it.

The timeline strip at the top of the workflow also shows the whole campaign at a glance: each email, its timing, and the date it's built around.

[SCREENSHOT TO CAPTURE: Preview as a joiner showing a list of emails with dates, and the join-date picker]

Once people are in: Who gets what, and when

1. Open the workflow and scroll to Who gets what, and when.
2. Every person in the workflow is listed with their own send dates. Each email shows one of:
   • Sent, with the date it went.
   • Scheduled, with the date it will go.
   • Waiting for a slot: it's due, but the person has reached your daily or weekly limit, or a higher-priority workflow is using their allowance. It will keep trying until its moment passes.
   • Skipped, with the reason in plain English. For example: they joined after its moment had passed, it didn't fit, or it couldn't go before its moment because of your limits.
3. Search by name or email to find one person. You can also filter by their status in the workflow.
4. The list shows 25 people a page, so it stays quick even for a very large list.

[SCREENSHOT TO CAPTURE: the Who gets what, and when section with one contact expanded showing Sent / Scheduled / Skipped]

For one person: their Workflows section

1. Go to Audience → Manage Contacts and press the pencil (✏️) on the person's row to open Edit Person.
2. Look at the Workflows section. It lists every workflow they're in and their status in each one, what has been sent with dates, what's coming with dates, and anything skipped with the reason.
3. For a rhythm workflow you'll see the next email and how often the workflow sends.

If you want more detail

• Held: no date. In a workflow that uses each person's own date, someone without that date on their record joins but is held. Nothing is scheduled for them, and nothing is guessed. The workflow card shows a flag such as "⚑ 3 contacts have no date". Add the date to their record and their emails are scheduled straight away.
• Paused workflows. If the workflow is switched off, a person's next email shows as waiting rather than as a date in the past. When you switch it back on, their emails are rescheduled into the time left, not all sent at once.
• Ended early. If a contact received a tag you named under End their journey early when…, their remaining emails show as cancelled and they show as having left the workflow, with the reason.
• Preview warns you about your limits. If your daily limit means some emails would go later than shown, Preview tells you.
• Rhythm workflows (From the beginning, From the latest email, Never-ending) send on a regular beat, so there are no individual dates to preview. The contact's Workflows section still shows what they've had and what's next.

The question behind the question

"Can I trust it to do the right thing when I'm not looking?" Yes, and you can check rather than trust. Every email is either sent, scheduled with a date, waiting with a reason, or skipped with a reason. Nothing disappears without saying why. If a patient asks "why didn't I get the reminder?", you can give them a real answer in seconds 💡.

The next question is usually...

• How does email timing work when a workflow runs around a date?
• Which kind of email workflow should I use?
• How do I send birthday or renewal emails every year?

Still stuck? This usually means...

• You can't see Preview as a joiner or Who gets what, and when. These belong to workflows that run around a date. Rhythm workflows send on a regular beat, so check the contact's Workflows section instead.
• A contact shows as held. They don't have the date the workflow needs. Add it to their record, or send it in when you enrol them (see "How do I add people to a date workflow from another system, with their own date?").
• Lots of emails are Waiting for a slot. Your daily or weekly limits are tight for the number of workflows people are in. Raise the limits in the bar at the top of Email Workflows, or set this workflow's priority to High.
• An email shows as Skipped and you don't understand the reason. Tell us in the chat with the workflow name and the contact. We'll explain it.