How contacts enter and move through a journey

Understand how contacts enter a journey, move through steps and paths, and exit based on journey logic, Smart stops, or manual actions.

What we'll cover

1. Concepts
2. How contacts enter
3. How contacts move through steps
4. How contact filtering works
5. How contacts exit
6. FAQ
7. Need help?

1 Concepts

Entry triggers
Contacts enter through one or more entry triggers at the top of the journey.

Flow movement
After entry, contacts move through action steps and flow steps such as Wait, splits, Join, and Go to.

Exit behavior
Contacts exit when they reach the end, hit an exit step, match a Smart stop, are manually removed, or are affected by stop or reset behavior.

Note: Journeys use the selected audience for contact data, criteria, and related fields.

2 How contacts enter

Contacts can enter a journey in three ways:

1. Entry trigger: If a contact meets the configured trigger criteria or a supported event occurs, Tarvent adds the contact to the journey.
2. Start a journey step: A contact can be added from another journey using the Start a journey action step, regardless of the target journey's triggers.
3. Manual add: You can manually add a contact to a journey from the contact record or journey tools.

This gives you a mix of automated entry and manual control, depending on how the journey is being used.

3 How contacts move through steps

Once a contact enters the journey, Tarvent moves them through each step automatically.

When a contact reaches the last step, they have completed the journey unless they are exited earlier by a Smart stop, an Exit a journey step, or a manual action.

Along the way, a step can include an Apply to which contacts filter. If the contact does not match that filter, Tarvent skips that step and continues to the next one.

4 How contact filtering works

Journey contact filtering uses the same engine and screens as Tarvent segmentation.

You build criteria with:

• Rules for a single field comparison
• Rule groups to combine conditions
• AND and OR logic to control how rules are evaluated
• Smart filters to add prebuilt system criteria to your rules

In the filter screen, choose a Field, Operator, and Value for each rule. The operator list changes based on the field type and can include options like equals, contains, starts with, is blank, and is not blank.

Use the Original and Current toggle when a step supports comparing original values vs current values. This is useful when you need to control whether the rule checks the value at entry time or the latest value.

For more on Smart filters, see Smart filters.

5 How contacts exit

Contacts can exit a journey in several ways:

• They complete the last step in the journey
• A Smart stop condition matches while they are in the journey
• An Exit a journey step removes them from the journey path
• You manually remove them from the journey

This lets you control both normal completion and early exits based on behavior, status, or business rules.

6 FAQ

7 Need help?

If you need help with Tarvent Journeys setup, troubleshooting, or strategy, contact support. We are happy to help.