# Orchestrations

Orchestrations are multi-step automated workflows that coordinate actions across email, SMS, voice calls, and other connected processes. They let you define repeatable sequences with triggers, actions, waits, and branching logic.

## Key Concepts

- **Orchestration** — A workflow definition with triggers, actions, and branches
- **Trigger** — What starts the workflow (time-based, event-based, or manual)
- **Action** — A step in the workflow (send email, make call, send SMS, wait, etc.)
- **Branch** — Conditional logic that routes contacts down different paths based on their behavior

## Getting Started

1. Navigate to **Agents > Orchestrations**
2. Click **+ Create Orchestration**
3. Build your workflow using the visual editor
4. Save and activate

## One-off Campaigns

Not every send needs a hand-built workflow. **Agents → Workflows → Send Campaign** opens a five-step wizard — channel, content, recipients, schedule, review — that compiles into an orchestration for you. You write the email or SMS yourself with personalization tags such as `{{first_name|there}}`, or hand the writing to an existing email strategy or SMS agent. Follow-ups, scheduling (now, once, recurring, metered, or manual), consent suppression, per-number SMS pacing, and per-recipient outcomes all come from the same orchestration engine.

```mermaid
flowchart LR
    A[List, upload,<br/>or pasted addresses] --> W[Send Campaign wizard]
    W --> O[Compiled orchestration]
    O -->|scheduler tick| S[Send batches<br/>consent + rate limits applied]
    S --> R[Recipients tab<br/>sent · delivered · opened · clicked · replied]
    R -->|cohort action| L[New list]
    L --> W
```

Because the result is a normal orchestration, everything below applies to campaigns too: pause or stop them, read the log, and open the compiled steps in the builder when you need branching or another agent in the loop. See [Sending a Campaign](/help/orchestrations/send-campaign) and [Reading Campaign Results](/help/orchestrations/campaign-results).

## Orchestration List

The Orchestrations page gives you a central list of all workflow definitions in your workspace. From this view, you can review:

- **Name** and **description**
- **Status** — Active, paused, or draft
- **Trigger Type** — How the workflow starts
- **Execution Count** — How many times it has run
- Quick actions: view, edit, dashboard, logs

<!-- SCREENSHOT: orchestrations-list.png — Orchestrations list page -->

## Pausing vs. Stopping

From the Orchestrations list you can either **pause** or **stop** a running workflow — the difference matters when work is already in flight.

- **Pause** is a soft, reversible switch. The workflow stops scheduling and executing new steps, but any work already queued for it (for example per-contact email sends or calls that were already enqueued) stays in the backlog. When you re-enable the orchestration, that queued work resumes.
- **Stop** is a terminal action. Karmaflow.ai disables the orchestration **and cancels its spawned-but-not-yet-run work** — pending jobs (actions, per-contact email sends, recurring and simple-time triggers, for-each items) and any **queued, not-yet-dialed** calls are marked canceled. Calls that are already connecting or in progress are left to finish. Stopping also ends a recurring workflow's self-reschedule loop.

Stop is one-way: re-enabling a stopped orchestration starts fresh rather than replaying the cleared backlog. Reach for **Stop** when you need to halt an in-progress run immediately (for example, to kill a campaign that's actively sending or dialing); use **Pause** when you only want to hold a workflow temporarily.