Journey Design and Orchestration
Journey design centers on the journey canvas, where you assemble activities into a flow. The candidate must know the activity categories: entry sources (events, audience reads, scheduled reads), actions (channel sends, custom actions), orchestration activities (wait, condition, parallel paths, jump, time-bound waits), and data/decision activities (offer decision, update profile, custom actions).
Key concepts: entry events define how profiles enter; re-entrance rules control whether a profile can re-enter and how often; wait activities can be duration-based or date-based (fixed date, or "wait until" a time). Conditions branch on profile attributes or event context. Timeouts on waits and events prevent profiles from being stuck. Journey properties include the time zone, which affects all waits and scheduled sends.
The biggest traps are: (1) forgetting that a journey has a single entry source per version; (2) misunderstanding re-entrance - by default profiles may not re-enter, and you must explicitly enable it; (3) confusing event timeout (how long to wait for an event before the profile exits or proceeds) with wait duration; (4) assuming a condition activity creates parallel paths - it does not, it branches; use parallel paths for simultaneous actions. Another trap: test mode does not deliver real messages and does not update the profile.
Worked example
A welcome journey should send an email immediately, then wait 3 days, then check if the customer made a purchase. Model it as: event entry → email action → wait 3 days → condition (purchase = true) → branch to a thank-you SMS or a reminder email. Set re-entrance to "allow" only if you want repeat welcome sends, which is usually undesirable.
Rule of thumb
Draw the journey as a timeline. Every wait and every event timeout must have an explicit duration or date; otherwise profiles can linger indefinitely or exit unexpectedly.