Drafts

A draft is a journey send that waits for approval. Boom prepares the message exactly as it would send it, with the recipient, the sender and every variable filled in, and holds it. Nothing reaches the customer until someone on your team approves it. Use drafts when a person should see a message before it goes out:

• The first sends to a new audience. Check a few real messages before you let the rest go.
• Sensitive content. Collections, account changes, or anything where a wrong variable would hurt.
• Compliance review. When your process needs a named person to sign off on each outbound message.

Drafting is set per send step, so one journey can draft its first message and send the follow-ups on its own.

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Turn it on

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Review drafts

Drafts are reviewed inside the campaign or initiative they belong to. Open it and choose Drafts in its sidebar, under Operational, after Executions. The sidebar shows how many drafts are pending (up to “99+”). The initiative page shows an N drafts waiting button, and the journey builder toolbar shows the same count as a badge. Both open the Drafts tab.

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By template

The tab opens By template: pending drafts grouped by what you are actually approving, one row per template version at each step. A row shows the template (and, if the template has changed since, which version these drafts were made from), the step, how many are pending, and how many have waited more than 24 hours. Click a group, or move with J and K, to see one example message from it, rendered exactly as it would be sent, plus a warning if the template was edited after the drafts were created. Approve N… and Reject N… decide the whole group. The confirmation, just above the example, gives the count, how many have waited more than 24 hours, and that drafts arriving later are not included. The same 5 second undo applies. The group then shows how many were sent and, if any could not be, how many, with a link that opens them in One by one. Approve all… in this view lists each group and its count before you confirm.

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Odd values

Some messages would go out wrong: a name that came through empty, or an amount of zero. For a WhatsApp group, Variables in this group lists each template variable with how many distinct values it takes and how many drafts have it empty or at zero (a value such as $0.00 or 0,00 MXN). The To review column in the group list shows how many drafts in each group have at least one. These drafts are left out of Approve N… and Approve all… by default. The confirmation says how many stay behind for review, and Include the N with odd values adds them back. Click a count, or Review them one by one, to open just those drafts in One by one (the To review chip; remove it to see the rest). In the preview, an odd value is shaded amber with a solid underline, an empty one reads Empty in the variables list, and a notice names each odd variable. Odd values are checked for WhatsApp only. Email drafts do not store their variables yet, so for email, check the example.

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One by one

Switch to One by one to review drafts individually. It can be narrowed to a single group (the Template: … chip; remove it to see every draft again). The list shows every draft with its recipient, step, status and age, plus the first line of its message (the WhatsApp text or the email subject). A pending draft older than 24 hours is marked in amber, because its content was fixed when it was drafted. Use Filter to narrow it by status, channel, journey version, step or when it was created, and Refresh to pick up new ones. Click a row to see the preview: the exact message that will be sent, with the template, the variables, and for email the From, Reply-To and subject. In a WhatsApp preview, the values filled into the template are lightly shaded with a dotted underline, so you can check each one. On a narrower screen the preview opens as a drawer from the bottom, only when you tap a row. The preview also shows how old the draft is, and warns Template edited since drafted if the template changed after the draft was made. For email, Show full email opens the whole message. A draft that has been decided shows who approved or rejected it, and when. You can decide:

• One draft, with Approve or Reject in its preview. There is no confirmation step, and the preview moves to the next pending draft right away.
• A selection, by ticking rows and choosing Approve selected or Reject selected. Approving, or rejecting more than one, asks you to confirm the count first, just above the list.
• Everything matching the current filter, with Approve all…, or Reject all pending… in the ⋯ menu. Drafts created after you opened the page are not included, so you never approve something you have not had the chance to see. The confirmation shows how many messages will go out and how many have waited more than 24 hours. Approving leaves out WhatsApp drafts with odd values unless you tick them in. Rejecting everything confirms in red and says that nothing will be sent.

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Five seconds to undo

Every decision waits 5 seconds before Boom acts on it. The preview, and a notice at the bottom of the screen, count down (Sending to Ana in 5s) with an Undo button. Undo inside those 5 seconds and nothing happens: the draft stays pending and nothing was sent. You can keep reviewing other drafts while one counts down. If you leave the page during the countdown, the decision is dropped and the draft stays pending. After the countdown, an approved draft shows Sending…, then Sent, or Could not send with what happened and what to do, for example that Meta no longer approves the template. A draft that could not be sent stays in the list with that reason. If someone else decided the draft first, the preview says who and when instead. Once you click into the list or a preview, the keyboard works too: the arrow keys move through the list, Space ticks a row and Enter opens it. J and K move between drafts, A approves, R rejects, and Esc closes the preview. Holding a key down does nothing extra, and A is ignored for a moment after the preview moves on, so a double press cannot approve two people. Screen readers hear the open draft’s name and its position in the list. When you reject, you can add an optional reason. It is kept on the draft as the reviewer’s note.

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What happens next

Approve sends the message you previewed, exactly as it is. Boom does not render it again, so a template edit made after the draft was created does not change what goes out. The journey’s send window and your channel’s rate limits still apply, so a large approval goes out at the same pace as live traffic. The run then continues on Sent. Reject sends nothing. The run takes the Rejected exit, or ends if nothing is connected to it. A rejected draft costs no credits: credits are only used when a message is actually sent.

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Checked again at delivery

Some things can change while a draft waits. These are checked again when an approved draft is delivered, and the draft is not sent if any fails. The Rejected exit is only for a reviewer’s rejection, so it never catches these. Each one takes the path below:

• Do Not Contact. A person who opted out in the meantime is skipped. On WhatsApp the run ends. On email the run continues on Sent, the same as an email step that skips an opted-out person without drafts.
• The template. A WhatsApp template no longer approved by Meta, or an email template no longer published, stops the send and the run ends.
• The sender. A WhatsApp number or email sender that is no longer available stops the send and the run ends.
• The journey. If the journey was stopped, the draft is not sent and the run ends.
• Smart Sending. The message limit is checked at delivery, not when the draft is created. An approved draft that would go over the limit is not sent: the run takes Capped, not sent, or ends if that path is not connected. Re-enroll the person later if the message is still needed.
• A reply (WhatsApp only). If the person replies while an approved WhatsApp draft is waiting for its send window, the draft is skipped and the run continues on Sent. Email drafts have no send window, so this never applies to them.

Each draft keeps its final status (Sent, Skipped, Failed, Canceled) and the reason, so the tab shows what happened to it.

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Limits

• Supported steps. WhatsApp template messages and email. Free-text WhatsApp, SMS, Instagram and Messenger sends cannot be drafted.
• Not in Transactional messages. A transactional message has to go out when its event fires, so its journey cannot use drafts.
• Several runs at once. On a journey with several runs per person, a send that waits for a send window cannot be drafted.
• Drafts do not expire yet. A draft waits until someone decides it, however long that takes.
• A waiting draft keeps the person in the journey. While their draft is pending, the same person cannot be enrolled again in that journey. Approve or reject it first.
• Stopping the journey cancels its drafts. Pending drafts move to Canceled and those runs end.
• Drafts can be turned off for an organization. When they are, the Delivery option is gone from the builder, and a journey with a step set to Draft for approval cannot be published. Drafts already waiting stay on the Drafts tab and can still be approved or rejected. A waiting draft is never sent without approval. Contact Boom support to turn drafts off or back on.

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Permissions

Two permissions control drafts, in the app and over MCP alike. Someone with read but not update sees the list and previews, without checkboxes or approve and reject buttons. Over MCP, drafts_list, drafts_get and drafts_count need read and drafts_decide needs update, so a Member can review what is waiting but only an Owner or Admin can send it. See roles and permissions.

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Over MCP

An AI agent connected over MCP can review drafts too:

• drafts_list lists drafts, with a preview of each, filtered by initiative, status and more. It returns asOf, the server time of the read.
• drafts_get returns one draft by id: its full preview, and who decided it, when and why.
• drafts_count counts the pending drafts a filter matches. Pass the asOf from drafts_list as createdTo to get the exact number a filter decide would change.
• drafts_decide approves or rejects drafts by id, or everything matching a filter. Approving sends real messages. A filter decide needs the asOf from drafts_list and an expectedCount from drafts_count. If the number of matching drafts has changed, it is refused and nothing is decided. To decide one template version at one step, the same group the Drafts tab shows, filter by workflowId, nodeId, templateId and templateUpdatedAt, taking the last two from a drafts_list row.
• Every filter takes odd: "only" for WhatsApp drafts with an empty or zero variable value, "exclude" for all the others (to approve a group without them, as the Drafts tab does).

When authoring a journey over MCP or the API, set delivery: "draft" on a SEND_MESSAGE (template mode) or SEND_EMAIL node. See journeys. There is no REST endpoint for deciding drafts. Approving a send has to name the person who approved it, and an organization API key identifies the integration, not a person. See one uniform surface. If you use webhooks, a run that ended because its draft was rejected reports journey_run.ended with reason: completed. To tell it apart, read the participant’s step history: the send step’s emittedSignal is REJECTED.

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