Flows

Flows is where you decide what happens to a lead from the moment they arrive: where they come in, who picks them up, what the first reply says, and how quiet or cold leads get pulled back.

Open Flows from the sidebar. It opens on Inbound.

Overview#

Flows has a left menu (a row across the top when the page is narrow) whose items follow a lead's life:

• Inbound is where you set what happens to the leads each source and chat channel brings in: the first reply, the Gene AI switch, and who gets them. The sources themselves are connected once under Settings > Lead Sources (see Lead Sources).
• Routing (managers) is the team rotation pool: the round-robin roster, weights, and languages that decide who each new lead is assigned to by default.
• Outbound is one unified outreach screen for reaching existing leads in your database, including reactivating cold or lost ones.
• Appointments holds the always-on messages that run around a booked meeting (confirmation, reminder, cancellation, no-show).
• Template library is the shelf of message templates the other items draw from.

The model is inbound, then routing, then follow-up:

1. A source you connected (a Meta lead ad, a website form, a CSV upload, a manual contact) drops a new lead into Gene.
2. The lead is auto-assigned to a teammate using the round-robin roster, narrowed to people who speak the lead's language.
3. The AI sends an automatic first reply (the per-source Welcome flow), on by default for every source. From there nurturing follow-ups, appointment messages, and outbound campaigns take over.

What you can do#

• Inbound: Set each source's and channel's welcome, Gene AI switch and routing override. See Inbound.
• Routing: Manage the team rotation pool every source defaults to. See Routing.
• Outbound tab: Run a one-time push to existing leads. Pick who gets it (Everyone, A Smart List, or Ask Gene to make one from a description), then let Gene draft the message, use an HTML template, or send a Listing Newsletter. See Outreach and Reactivation.
• Appointments tab: One card with a row per meeting message: its switch, Email and WhatsApp chips, reminder timing, and an Edit window for the wording. See Appointments.
• Per-source Welcome flow: The automatic first reply (and optional drip of follow-ups) that fires when a new lead arrives. See Nurturing.
• Template library: Keep the email and WhatsApp templates that Outbound and the welcome flow draw from. See Template library.

Popups and drawers#

The drawers and dialogs live on the sub-pages: the per-source editor on Inbound and the availability popover on Routing. Each is documented on its own page. The dialogs that connect a new source open from Settings > Lead Sources.

Tips#

• New leads get an instant AI reply by default. If you do not want that for a given source, turn its Gene AI switch off on Inbound.
• Routing has one default for everything. You set who is in rotation once on Routing, and a source or channel only differs if you change its own Lead routing select.
• Outbound never messages anyone more than twice, so you stay clear of spam limits. Heavy repeat outreach belongs on email.

---

Details#

The parts of Flows that belong to no single screen: the left menu and the Template library. Each screen's own details are at the bottom of its page: Inbound, Routing, Outbound and the Welcome flow. Appointments is described in full on Appointments.

Only live, default-on screens are described in full. Connectors that Gene Support turns on per workspace are noted where relevant but not described in full.

Top navigation#

• Left menu: Inbound, Routing (shown to managers, admins and Gene Support), Outbound, Appointments, Template library. Where they are turned on for your workspace, Forms sits right under Inbound and QR codes is a row inside the Inbound list (not a menu item of its own). The Listing Newsletter has no menu item: it is a message type inside Outbound, and Outbound stays highlighted while you edit one.
• When Flows has little room (a phone, or the Gene sidebar open on a smaller laptop screen), the same menu runs as one scrolling row under the Flows title at the top of the page instead of a left column, and the page gets the full width.
• Lead sources are folded into Inbound. The Inbound page has no sub-tabs, and there is no Routing tab inside it; Routing is its own menu item. Where QR codes are on, they are the last row in the Inbound list, and Inbound stays highlighted in the menu while you are on the QR codes page.
• Outbound and Appointments have no sub-tabs.

Template library#

Flows > Template library. The workspace's email and WhatsApp templates, the same ones Outbound email steps and the welcome flow pick from.

Email templates#

• Ready-made starters built from the workspace's own name, logo and listings, each with a preview and Use this, which keeps a copy under Your own templates.
• New email template opens a composer: name, subject, email text, with First name, Last name, Email and Phone merge-tag chips and a live preview. Create saves it.
• Upload .html takes a designer's exported file.
• Every template is sanitized on save.
• Opening a template's preview gives the email the page: the WhatsApp templates section below is hidden until you go back with All templates.

WhatsApp templates#

Shown when the workspace has the official WhatsApp connection (Meta, 360dialog, YCloud or Twilio). A QR-linked phone gets one line saying it does not use templates.

The list has one row per message, with columns for Template, Category, Language, Status and Updated:

• One row per message: the Marketing and Utility copies of the same words, and a welcome's versions in other languages, share a row. Category and language show as chips, for example Marketing Utility and Dutch English.
• Labels, not machine names: each row says what the template is for, such as "Inbox message", "Portal welcome", "Welcome follow-up", "Welcome · Website Forms" (the lead source it welcomes), "Team alert" (the templates WhatsApp alerts to teammates use, one per alert, see Notifications) or "Custom template" (one written here). A template made elsewhere, in WhatsApp Manager for example, reads as words ("hello_world" shows as "Hello world"). The start of the message sits under the label.
• Languages by name: "Dutch", "English". The region is added only when the list holds more than one kind of that language, for example "English (US)" beside "English (UK)". Meta's codes (nl, en_US) are not shown.
• Status: Approved, In review, Rejected, Paused or Disabled, as Meta reports it. A row with several versions shows the most urgent one, so a rejected Utility copy beside an approved Marketing copy reads Rejected.
• Updated: when the template last changed (an edit, an approval, a status change), as "Today", "Yesterday", "3 days ago" or a date. The column is left out when the provider gives no dates.
• Newest first: the eight most recently updated rows show, and Show all N opens the rest (Show fewer folds them again). The search box covers every template, not just the ones on show.
• Clicking a row opens a dialog with the full message and each version's language, category, date and status.
• Footer: "N of 6,000 templates used on this WhatsApp account" sits under the list.

New WhatsApp template (managers and up) opens a dialog with:

• the message, with a First name chip that inserts {{first_name}} (the only variable a template can carry)
• Marketing (new listings, market updates, re-engagement) or Utility (updates on something the lead asked for, like a viewing; Meta moves promotional ones to Marketing)
• the language, defaulting to the first language Gene replies in
• optional Media, Header, Footer and Buttons chips, the same ones as the Inbox's submit-to-Meta dialog and the Outbound message step: an image, video or document above the message, one line of text above it, one short line under it, and up to three quick replies or a link and a call button. Meta does not accept quick replies and link or call buttons in the same template, and it reviews the media, header and buttons along with the message. Once any part is added, a preview shows the message as the lead gets it. Meta's limits are checked as you type, and Submit for review stays off until they pass. On a WhatsApp number that sends through Twilio the chips are not shown, and templates are text only. On the Outbound message step the message goes out as an ordinary message instead, so buttons are written into the text as options the lead can reply with, and a file is sent as an attachment.

The dialog has no name field. Gene App names the template itself (it starts with gene_library_, so WhatsApp Manager still says where it came from) and the library lists it as "Custom template".

Draft with AI writes a template for the chosen category and language from what your business is known for. With text already in the box, it reads Rewrite with AI and reworks your wording into a template. Either only fills the box; nothing goes to Meta until you submit.

Submit for review checks the wording against Meta's format rules first, then sends the message and any added parts to Meta together. When a text-only template matches one the connected account already has (same message, language and category, approved or in review), Gene App uses that one instead of adding a copy. A template with media, a header, a footer or buttons is always submitted as new. Until Meta approves it, it shows as In review.

One-off templates (a single Inbox message or Gene reply sent past the 24-hour window) are deleted from the account a few minutes after delivery, so they drop off this list.

Related#

Inbound, Routing, Nurturing, Outreach, Reactivation, Appointments.