How 17Signal Runs Durable Sales Outreach Workflows

The Challenge of Multi-Day Workflows

An outbound campaign spans research, qualification, approval, sending, follow-up, and replies. Those steps can take days. A worker can restart in the middle of a batch, an external data request can finish only partially, and a prospect can reply while another action is scheduled.

The system needs a durable record of what happened and what should happen next.

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Persisted Runs and Small Batches

17Signal records agent runs, tasks, decisions, artifacts, and events. The campaign director coordinates context research, account-first sourcing, person verification inside qualified companies, outreach, reply handling, and later campaign tuning.

Sourcing works in small batches. Each batch records the campaign plan version it used. A partial provider result is recorded as partial; it is not silently treated as complete or filled with invented leads.

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Retry and Reply Handling

Workers use short leases, stable idempotency keys, persisted attempts, and retry dates. These controls let a due task resume without treating a duplicate request as a new campaign action. The orchestration service owns campaign delivery and reply handling, while user-visible events show progress and decisions.

When a reply indicates interest, the campaign can hold its current strategy. When a batch underperforms after enough sends, the optimizer can version the plan for future sourcing without rewriting in-flight prospects.

The practical advantage is visibility: teams can see observed events, warnings, and next actions instead of a simulated progress bar.