Automation Stuck Contacts
When you have a running automation you are able to click on a step and see which contacts are queued to be processed on this step and which contacts have gone through this step. There is another state that contacts can be on steps though, and that is "Stuck".
Stuck contacts mean the contact is trapped on this step and need to be manually fixed before they can move on. There are a few ways ways contacts can get stuck on steps and it's important to understand them.
Nowhere else to go
When the contact was processed on this step there were no steps created after this step. At this point we mark the contact as finished on this automation. If you then at a later add steps beneath this step those existing contacts are already finished they become stuck on this step
Inactive contact
If the step is to send an outgoing message (email, sms, chat etc) and the contact is set as active (denylisted, bounced, unsubscribed or inactive). They are not valid to receive that message and so are blocked from moving forward. We will show the status of the contacts in that step column so you can see if you need to manually update the status of those contacts.
There was an error
If there was a problem in the background processing this step we finish the contact so it can be remedied. These problems may be that an integration action failed due to the connecting to that application being down for example
What can you do about it?
When contacts get stuck you have 3 options for what to do with them
- Retry - retry the current step, this is useful if the contact was inactive and you want to retry sending the message or the integration issues have been resolved, they may become stuck immediately again if there is still an issue, otherwise they will continue to go through the automation normally.
- Skip - move the contact onto the next step in the automation rather than try and do the action again. This is suggested if this step used to be the last step as you normally not want to run the same action again.
- Nothing - leave them as stuck on this step, this will stop them entering this automation again or moving onto the next step.