I have a Welcome journey running a long time, and for every update, I always created a new version of it. But now I figure out that it has 10 versions where at least half of those are stopped. So, I'm wondering if it's time to new Journey starting from version 1 just to be more organized and to the journey be more maintainable. Any thoughts?
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2 Answers
New Version vs. New Copy
Review the recommended guidelines for when to use a new version or copy of a journey in Marketing Cloud’s Journey Builder.
Creating a copy of a journey creates a journey that is identical but runs independently, with a unique title, audience, and reporting. Creating a version using New Draft also duplicates the journey, but this version is associated with the parent journey for reporting purposes. Both are fully editable until activated.
Use Versions for Testing
Versions can be used to test a journey. Create a test audience or test the journey with a small sample size before publishing the journey to a larger audience. A new version can be created and modified based on insights from the sample journey.
Create New Versions to Optimize a Journey over Time
Versions are best used for historical performance comparison. A new version will allow you to optimize a single journey over time. You can create a journey, run it for a set period, review the performance, and then create a version to modify for optimization. Over time you will have a series of journeys to compare performance as you optimize the messaging, timing, and decision flows. This type of optimizing over time works well for ongoing journeys.
Copy a Journey for Real-time Comparison
Only one version of a journey can be the primary active, running version. If you want to compare real-time performance, create and activate a copy to run concurrently. This approach requires you to build and manage two separate journeys and audiences.
Definition of Terms
Copy creates an instance of the active journey from which it is copied. Both journeys use the same Entry Source and configured activities but run independently. However, each has a unique title, audience, and reporting which is available through the Journey overview page. A new copy starts in draft mode which is fully editable until activated.
New Draft creates a version of the journey that is active. The new version is associated to its parent journey for aggregate reporting purposes. Journey versions are available in the dropdown menu next to the journey name in the upper left. The new draft version is fully editable until activated.
Source: https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=mc_bp_new_version_vs__new_copy.htm&type=5
As to potential performances issue related to using a journey with a lot of versions, I asked support about it, and they told me that there shouldn't be any.
You might, however, run into issues if you have too many active journeys in your account: Unable to stop journeys when there are 300 or more journeys
answered Jan 17, 2020 at 11:40
If you're feeling that the list is becoming congested with all the versions, you can always delete the unwanted versions. The only scenario where I see the need to re-do the journey is if the Entry Data structure was changed (additional fields etc.) especially if your Entry Data is Salesforce or something else broke the journey which is no longer performing correctly - these things can happen e.g. connector dropping can sometimes mess up things.
One pitfall to possibly keep in mind - if I'm not mistaken, when you delete a version of the journey you lose access to the historical logs in JB of that version.
EDIT: Just to confirm, it's entirely possible to delete previous versions of the journey one by one. You will find that option in JB interface.
