Introduction
Pathways is a feature in Cogniss that enables app creators to combine a range of activity contents into a comprehensive experience, resulting in a more significant and meaningful experience for end users. Activities within a pathway require users to go through and be completed in a linear order.
This feature also has the ability to add conditions that determine which pathway a user will follow based on specific criteria, such as answers to specific questions or overall score based on previous activity.
Use case examples for Pathways
There are various reasons to use pathways in order to group activities together. These include:
Basic onboarding sequence after account creation, where users are given information about the application and also a series of onboarding questions to understand their habits. (see below)
The eligibility screening of participants for a research study that depends on their answers to a collection of screening questions. (see below)
Pathway for educational or corporate training lessons that consolidates multiple training courses into a suggested sequence for users to follow and complete.
(see below)
Set conditions to navigate through a pathway
Pathways activity can include rules or conditions to determine whether that activity should be shown and presented to users, depending on their answers.
This set of conditions includes:
Multi-choice/multi-select answers to questions
Text responses to questions (must be the exact text)
Activity completion - whether they have completed the activity or not
User profile check - dependent on their user profile
Activity/question response on a scored activity
Less than a score (LT)
Less than or equal to a score (LTE)
Greater than a score (GT)
Greater than or equal to a score (GTE)
Equal to a specific score
Not equal to a specific score
Best practices for using Pathway conditions
When you start adding conditions, it can be tempting to create lots of complex rules straight away. To keep your pathways easy to manage and understand, consider the following tips:
Keep rules simple to start with: Begin with one or two conditions per activity (for example, a single Question response rule) and test that the pathway behaves as expected before adding more rules.
Use clear, stable questions as triggers: Base your conditions on questions that are unlikely to change over time, such as key onboarding questions or core screening items. Avoid using experimental questions as triggers unless you are comfortable updating the rules later.
Group related checks into one rule type: Where possible, use a single rule type (for example, Activity score or Question score) instead of mixing different condition types for the same decision. This makes it easier to see at a glance why a user is moving down a particular pathway.
Avoid overlapping logic: Try not to create rules that conflict with one another, such as two activities that both expect the same combination of responses. If you need different experiences for similar users, use slightly different thresholds or different questions to separate them.
Name activities with the logic in mind: Give pathway activities clear, outcome‑focused names so it’s obvious what a user will see after a particular rule is met (for example, “Self-Management Tips..” or “Book an appointment.”).
Test with real user flows: Before you go live, run through the pathway as if you are a new user: complete the relevant activities, answer questions with different responses, and confirm that each rule takes you to the expected next step.
Document your rules outside the builder: For more complex pathways using lots of conditions, we recommend mapping out your pathway flow to help you visualise the user journey (this can be done in your user flow document) or keep a document or table that lists the condition type, the subject and activity it references, and the values or options used. This will help you and others understand exactly how the pathway has been set up and its expected function. This makes troubleshooting and handover much easier, especially when multiple people are working on the same app
Plan your pathway flow before building
Before you start configuring conditions in Creator, it could help to map out your pathway flow first. This gives you a clear picture of how users should move between activities
If you are a visual learner, use a tool like Miro, or a whiteboard:
Draw each activity as a box.
Add arrows to show where users should go next based on their answers or scores.
Label each arrow with the response or condition that triggers that branch.
If you prefer working with text, you can plan the same thing using bullet points or a simple outline:
Start with the Subject > Activity that contains your key question.
Underneath, list each possible response and which activity it should lead to.
Use indentation to show hierarchy and branching.
For example, you might have an activity with the question “How would you rate your symptoms right now?” and two answer options.
If the user selects "Mild – I can manage day-to-day", the pathway sends them to an activity called Self-Management Tips.
If the user selects "Moderate to severe – I need help", the pathway instead sends them to an activity called Book an Appointment.
Once you’re happy with this map, you can recreate it in the Pathways editor by adding Question response conditions that reference the same subject, activity, question and options you planned out.