Publishing & managing sequences

Publishing transforms your sequence from a configuration into an active campaign that sends messages, tracks engagement, and moves contacts through your outreach flow. Once it is live, you can still fix a step, add new steps at the end, pause or remove individual leads, and duplicate the sequence when you need a different structure.

Sequence lifecycle

A sequence has three statuses:

• Draft: being built; no messages are sent and leads cannot be launched
• Published: live; sends messages on schedule and accepts leads
• Deactivated (shown as Unpublished in the sequences list): turned off with Disable; sends stop, and the sequence can be edited and published again

To publish, review the flow and settings, then click Publish. The first time, the confirmation explains that after publishing you can no longer add, remove or reorder steps, and lists what stays editable: Edit senders, Modify details of existing steps and Add new steps to the end of the sequence. Click Publish Sequence to go live.

Modifying a published sequence

A published sequence is locked while it runs: the Editor is greyed out. To change it, take it offline, edit, and publish it again:

1. Click Disable and confirm Deactivate Sequence. The status changes to Deactivated, and nothing sends while it is off.
2. Open the step you want to change, edit it, and click Save.
3. Click Publish, then Re-Publish in the Re-Publish Sequence dialog.

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Fixing a sequence that is already running. Click Disable so nothing sends, open the step, change the text and click Save. You can edit any step and add steps at the end, and finished leads resume with new steps, but you cannot delete or reorder existing ones, because leads are partway through and could receive the same message twice. Click Publish, then Re-Publish: leads who have not reached the step get the new text. To delete or reorder, duplicate the sequence.

Transcript

When a running sequence needs a fix, click Disable, and nothing sends while it's off. The sequence canvas is the backbone of every sequence, even the ones inside agents. Then open the step, change the text, and click Save. You can edit any step and add new ones at the end, and leads who had finished pick up again with the new steps. But you can't delete or reorder the ones you have. Leads are already partway through them, so a change could send someone the same message twice and put your sender reputation at risk. Now click Publish, then Re-Publish. Leads who haven't reached that step get the new text, and anyone who already received it keeps the old one. To delete or reorder steps, duplicate the sequence and edit the copy. Before the Q4 push, Alex asks Claude to reword a live step. Claude edits step two and leaves it unpublished. Claude, ChatGPT or any assistant you connect to Vetta works on your real workspace, so use it for risky edits, then give it a bigger job each week. In Vetta, check step two, then republish it yourself.

Each lead keeps their place while the sequence is off. When you publish again, they carry on from where they were.

What you can change after the first publish

After the first publish you can:

• Edit the details of any existing step: the text, the subject, variables, the delay and the senders
• Add new steps at the end of the sequence
• Change the sequence settings, such as the sending window and the reply rules

You cannot delete existing steps or change their order. Leads are already partway through those steps, so a change could send someone the same message twice and put your sender reputation at risk. Before the first publish, you can restructure the flow freely.

Global Sending Limits are not part of this loop: they apply to the whole workspace, not to one sequence.

What leads already in the sequence receive

When you re-publish, Vetta applies your changes like this:

• Leads who have not reached an edited step get the new version when they get there
• Leads who already received that step keep the old one; nothing is sent again
• New leads get the new version of everything
• Leads who completed the sequence resume only if you added steps after their last step, and they then receive those new steps

For example, say lead A has received step 1 and is waiting for step 2. You change the text of both steps and re-publish. Lead A keeps the step 1 they already got and receives your new step 2.

Duplicate a sequence to restructure it

When you need to remove steps, reorder them or rebuild the flow, duplicate the sequence and edit the copy. In the Sequences list, select the sequence, click Duplicate and choose:

• Sequence only: copies the steps, messages and settings, without senders or leads. Use it to reuse a flow for new leads.
• Sequence with all leads: copies the steps, settings, senders and every lead except those who unsubscribed. Every lead starts again from the first step once the copy is published, including leads who already received messages or replied.
• Move unfinished leads: moves the leads who haven't completed the sequence into the new copy, so they carry on in the restructured flow and leave the original. Leads who already finished stay where they are.

The copy is created as a Draft, so nothing sends until you publish it. With the first two options the original sequence is left as it is: if you copy the leads, disable the original or remove the overlap first, so nobody is messaged by both.

Enrolling and launching leads

Add contacts to the sequence, then let it launch them.

Add leads

• From the sequence's lead list: open Leads, choose Import list from database, pick People or a pipeline, tick the contacts and click Import People
• From the CRM: select contacts in a table view and use Add to Sequence
• Automatically via Workflows: the Add to Sequence Campaign workflow action enrols contacts when your conditions are met

People who are already in the sequence or who have unsubscribed are skipped when you enrol them.

Launch leads

With Enable auto launch for this campaign on (Sequence Settings), new leads start as soon as the sequence is published. Click Published in the toolbar to follow them: the To Publish tab holds leads that have not started yet (where you can also Remove Leads before anything is sent), and the Published tab shows leads in progress with their status.

Understanding lead stages

Each enrolled contact has a Stage that tracks their journey through the campaign:

Stage	Meaning
New	Just added, not yet started
Sequencing	Moving through the steps
ICP filtered out	Stopped by the Qualify Lead step because they don't match your targeting
Contacted	Received at least one message
Neutral Reply	Replied with "not now" or "wrong person"
Replied Positive	Replied with interest
Info Requested	Asked for more information
Replied Negative	Not interested, or asked to unsubscribe
Out of office (retry manually)	An auto-reply was detected; retry them later
Meeting Set	A meeting was booked
Lost	Marked lost by you

Stages move forward only, so a second reply never pulls a lead back to an earlier stage. Vetta classifies each reply into one of seven categories (Interested, Info requested, Not now, Out of office, Wrong person, Not interested, Unsubscribe), moves the stage to match, and shows the sentiment tag on the conversation in the inbox. You cannot change the category Vetta assigned by hand yet. See Monitoring & optimizing results for the reply sentiment report.

Separately from the stage, each contact has a status (Active or Paused), and each pending step run has an execution state (Not Started, Enqueued, In Progress, Completed, Failed, Stopped).

Vetta also tracks per-lead flags you can filter on: Has Replied, Has Replied By Company Colleague, Has Clicked Link, Has Unsubscribed.

Managing individual leads

You can pause, resume or remove any lead at any time, without touching the rest of the sequence. The lead list has three tabs: Active Leads, Paused Leads and Soft Deleted. Select one or more leads, then:

• Pause: the lead stops at their current step and keeps their place and history
• Resume: a paused lead carries on from where they stopped
• Remove: takes the lead out of the sequence and discards their run; use it when someone is no longer a prospect. Removed leads appear in Soft Deleted, where you can Restore them, and you can add them to a sequence again later

When a lead replies

By default, a reply stops that lead's sequence and creates a task for the owner, so nobody gets a follow-up after they have answered. A link click does the same by default. You control this in Reply and Exit Settings:

• Stop the campaign for people that reply by WhatsApp, email or LinkedIn message, or click on a link
• Also pause people from the same company, so colleagues stop too when one person replies
• Create a new task when people reply or click a link
• Trigger a workflow when people reply, or when people don't reply after a set time

A reply ends that lead's run in this sequence. To keep nurturing people who replied, put them in a new sequence rather than adding steps to the old one.

If AI Reply Settings are on, Vetta also writes a draft answer and can create a task to review it. Drafts are never sent on their own: a person reviews, edits and sends them from the inbox. See Managing conversations.

When a lead has no email or LinkedIn URL

A send step needs the right address. With auto-enrich on the step (for email, Enrich if it doesn't exist), Vetta tries to find the missing work email or LinkedIn URL right before the step runs; lookups use credits, and leads who already have the address are not looked up. If Vetta still cannot find it, the step is either skipped or fails with an error you can retry later, depending on the step's setting. To route these leads on purpose, put a Has Email Address or Has LinkedIn URL condition in front of the step.

Monitoring execution

• Run views show each contact's progress through the steps in real time: use them to debug failed sends (invalid email, missing phone number, disconnected sender)
• Execution errors list failed contacts and failed senders with the reason; once you have fixed the cause, tick them and click Retry
• Analytics show the campaign funnel: Leads launched, Leads reached, Message sent, Delivered, Opened rate, Clicked rate, Replied rate, Positive replies, and Connection acceptance: see Monitoring & optimizing results

Best practices

• Walk every branch of the flow before publishing, because existing steps cannot be deleted or reordered afterwards
• Start with 10 to 50 leads, monitor results, then scale up
• Check execution health daily in the first week
• Deactivate finished sequences to keep your workspace clean
• Honor unsubscribes and opt-outs immediately

Common questions

Key outcome

You can publish a sequence knowing exactly what happens when you change it: the Disable, edit, Publish loop keeps leads in place, edits reach only the steps a lead has not received yet, and a duplicate gives you a clean draft for bigger changes. Individual leads stay under your control, with pause, resume and remove available at any time.