---
title: "Preview and send a test"
description: "Read a step as a particular employee, with tokens, sender and recipient resolved, then send it to yourself in Slack or email before you publish."
sidebar:
  order: 2
area: flows
feature: steps
appPath: /flows/home
lastVerified: 2026-10-22
version: "2026-10-16"
audience: admin
screenshots:
  - id: flows-steps-preview-modal
    caption: The Preview dialog, with Preview for principal at the top and Send a test to yourself at the foot.
related:
  - flows/steps/choose-a-sender
  - flows/automations/manually-enroll-employees
  - flows/steps/reference-tokens
intercom:
  - id: "6005696"
    title: Preview and Send Your Pyn
    url: https://intercom.help/pyn/en/articles/6005696-preview-and-send-your-pyn
    note: "Pyn 1 article, kept for reference"
---

A message that reads well in the editor can still surprise you once the tokens are filled in. **Preview** shows the step for a real employee, and **Send a test to yourself** delivers it to your own inbox or Slack exactly as a real send would.

## Before you start

- The step has a sender under **From**. Without one the test button is disabled and reads **Set a sender to send a test** on hover.
- Your own user is matched to an employee record (same work email), because the test is sent to that employee.

![Preview renders the step for an employee you pick, and sends a test to you.](https://support.pynhq.com/media/flows/steps/flows-steps-preview-modal.png)

## Steps

1. In Pyn, open the automation from **Flows**, **Automations**, and select the step.

2. Select **Preview** (the eye icon in the toolbar, or the **Preview** button under a raw HTML body). Pyn waits for your latest edit to save, then opens the **Preview** dialog.

3. Under **Preview for principal**, select an employee. Current employees and upcoming joiners are offered, so you can check a pre-start message against someone who has not started. The header shows the resolved recipient, for example the manager, and the sender a conditional sender picks for them.

4. Read the message with that employee's tokens filled in. Select **Clear recipient** to go back to the raw template.

5. Select **Send a test to yourself**. A toast reads **Test sent** when it is on its way, or **Could not send test** if the sender cannot send.

6. Open your inbox or Slack and read it as the recipient would.

> **Note:** A Slack test always comes from **Pyn Bot**, whichever Slack sender the step uses, unless the step uses a conditional sender, in which case it comes from the sender the rules pick for you. An email test comes from the step's sender.

## What you should see

The test is marked as a test: it does not appear in [Messages](https://support.pynhq.com/activity/messages/) counts and never triggers a flow from a form inside it. If an email preview reads **Could not preview this email for the employee**, the raw HTML has Liquid that fails for that person; fix it before publishing. To test timing as well as content, enrol yourself with **Flag as Test**: see [Manually enroll employees](https://support.pynhq.com/flows/automations/manually-enroll-employees/).

## Related

- [Choose a sender](https://support.pynhq.com/flows/steps/choose-a-sender/) if the test button is disabled.
- [Manually enroll employees](https://support.pynhq.com/flows/automations/manually-enroll-employees/) for a test enrollment that runs the whole flow.
- [Tokens](https://support.pynhq.com/flows/steps/reference-tokens/) for the fallback text you see when a value is missing.

## Related Intercom articles

- [Preview and Send Your Pyn](https://intercom.help/pyn/en/articles/6005696-preview-and-send-your-pyn) — Pyn 1 article, kept for reference