> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.fapost.in/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Publishing a flow

> Taking a draft live, and what happens to conversations already running.

A flow has two states at once: the **draft** being worked on, and the
**published version** contacts are receiving. They move independently.

## Save draft, then publish

**Save draft** stores your work. Nothing reaches contacts.

**Publish** promotes the draft to live. From that moment, new conversations use
it.

<Warning>
  There is no staging step between the click and the contacts. A published flow
  is in front of real people immediately, which is why the permission to publish
  is separate from the permission to edit — see
  [Roles and permissions](/using/roles-and-permissions).
</Warning>

Run **Validate** in the [builder](/using/flow-builder) first. It catches the
problems that are cheap to fix before publishing and expensive after: a required
field left empty, an outcome wired to nothing, a structure that cannot complete.

## The version badge

The builder shows the flow's published version — `Published v1` — and the
[flows list](/using/flows) shows the same in its *Versions* column.

**A dash means the flow has never been published.** It can be built, saved,
validated and made active, and contacts will still never see it. This is the
single most common reason a finished-looking flow does nothing.

## Conversations already running

Publishing does not disturb them.

A [session](/using/sessions) holds the version of the flow it started with and
keeps it until it ends. Someone halfway through answering questions carries on
with the flow they began, even while a new version is live for everyone starting
fresh.

<Note>
  This is why publishing a fix does not repair conversations already stuck in the
  broken version. They finish, or time out, on the old one. Where that matters,
  the session lifetime in [Settings](/using/tenant-settings) is what decides how
  long they linger.
</Note>

## Active and published

Two independent switches, and the combination is what confuses people:

| Active | Published | Result                                             |
| ------ | --------- | -------------------------------------------------- |
| Yes    | Yes       | Running normally                                   |
| Yes    | No        | Ready to run, nothing to run — still being written |
| No     | Yes       | A published version exists, but nothing starts it  |
| No     | No        | Neither                                            |

Deactivating stops new sessions starting. It does not unpublish, and it does not
stop sessions already under way.

## Publishing again

Every publish produces a new version. The one before it is not lost — the version
history is what makes a flow a versioned document rather than a file that gets
overwritten.

In practice this means publishing is reversible in the way that matters:
returning to a previous version is a publish, not a rebuild.