Debugging a flow

The most common bug: “my customer tapped a button but the flow didn’t move on.” Walk through this checklist — in order — and most of the time you’ll find the cause in the first two steps.

1. Did you re-publish after the edit?

Flows only run the published version. If you edited a flow but didn’t click Publish, customers are still running the older snapshot.

→ Open the flow → click Publish → try again with a new test conversation.

2. Did the customer actually tap that button?

Open the conversation in the inbox. The customer’s tap shows up as a message in the thread. Confirm:

• It’s the button you expect (the label matches).
• It arrived after your last publish (anything older was run against the old version).

If the tap isn’t in the thread at all, the message never reached us — most often a phone number quality / opt-out / 24-hour-window issue. See delivery troubleshooting.

3. Was the button actually wired to a next step?

Open the flow editor. Hover the block that asked the question:

• Every button you offered must have a wire coming out of its green socket going somewhere. A button with no outgoing wire = dead end.
• For the user-input block, note there are two sockets — “On answer” and “Continue”. Pick the one you actually meant to use.

If a wire was missing, drag one + re-publish.

4. Did the next block fail?

Sometimes the button works fine but the block it routes to is broken. The most common cases:

• Template message — Meta rejected it. The conversation will show a system note like “WhatsApp rejected this template — parameter format does not match.” Fix the template variables in the block config.
• HTTP request — the upstream API errored or timed out. The block’s developer panel (top-right of the conversation, Inspect flow state) shows the response.
• 24-hour window expired — for non-template outbound messages, you can only reply within 24h of the customer’s last message.

5. Inspect the live flow state

For the most precise look at what’s happening:

1. Open the conversation in the inbox.
2. Click the developer panel icon (top-right of the conversation).
3. Click Inspect flow state.

You’ll see the current flow, the step the customer is stuck on, the variables the runtime has so far, and the timeline of every advance + block render.