Create a standard campaign

A standard campaign is the default: you publish a form and a deadline, suppliers submit against it, and you decide what arrives. Setup is a five-step guided wizard, and every step stays editable until you open the campaign.

Before you start

You need four decisions and one list.

Step 1. Name and deadline

Start from Campaigns›+ New campaign. The Guided setup banner across the top shows all five steps; finished steps are ticked and clickable, so you can go back at any time.

1. Name the campaign

   The code is derived from the name, uppercased and stripped to letters and digits, capped at twelve characters. It is what your reference IDs start with: Q4PROMO-VENDOR-001.

   If the derived code collides with a previous campaign, press Customize code and type your own. Codes are unique within your organization.

2. Choose the type of collection

   Promotions, Displays, Marketing, or Other. Choosing Other reveals a free-text box. This is a label on the campaign, not a behaviour switch; it is what makes a list of thirty campaigns readable a year later.

3. Set the submission deadline

   Defaults to two weeks out. The campaign closes itself at the end of that day, in your timezone.

4. Choose what happens at the deadline

   At the deadline has two settings. Close, the default, means nothing can be filed after the deadline. Accept late means suppliers can still file after it, and every line filed after the close carries a Late flag on your Received table, on the supplier roster and on the supplier's page, so you can see which offers arrived after the date you set.

5. Optionally clone a previous campaign

   Under Reuse configuration from a previous campaign, pick a source and decide whether to copy its participating contacts and their tags too.

6. Press Create campaign

   The campaign now exists as a DRAFT. No supplier can see it and no email has been sent. The guide moves to step 2.

Step 2. Timeline

The deadline you just set anchors everything else. This step is where you say what happens either side of it, and who gets reminded when. Every row is optional: save an empty timeline and the campaign still closes itself on the deadline. Full detail is in Milestones and reminders; here is the wizard path.

1. Apply a saved plan, or build it by hand

   If your organization has saved milestone plans, Apply a plan below the editor drops one in with its dates computed from this campaign's deadline. Otherwise press Insert a step and name the milestone.

2. Say when each one lands

   Relative holds a milestone a number of days before or after the deadline, so it follows the deadline if the deadline moves. Fixed pins it to a date of its own. Move then a day on the calendar does the same thing by pointing.

3. Choose the reminders

   Each milestone carries its own reminder offsets, as Remind tokens on the row. Add adds one, in days before or after that milestone. The calendar panel's Reminders view counts what that adds up to: how many emails, on how many days, and which of them land on a weekend.

4. Decide about weekends

   Business days only rolls any milestone that lands on a weekend back to the Friday before, never forward. A deadline is something somebody has to meet, and rolling it forward hands out two days nobody agreed to. Individual rows can opt out of the campaign rule.

5. Press Save and continue

   The step's own save carries you to step 3. Save as plan keeps this cadence in the template library for the next campaign, stored as offsets from the deadline rather than as dates.

Step 3. Form

This is the form your suppliers fill in, and the thing the Excel template is generated from, column for column. Full detail is in Intake forms and field types; here is the wizard path.

1. Start from a template, or start blank

   If your organization has saved intake-form templates, Import a template appears above the builder. Applying one replaces the current form, so apply it before you start editing rather than after. It is available until the campaign opens.

2. Add the fields

   For each field: a label, a type, and whether it is required. The key is derived from the label and is what the Excel template uses to match columns, which is why a workbook still parses after somebody reorders the columns.

3. Set the constraints that matter

   Number and currency fields take a minimum and a maximum. Date fields take a window, which is how you say "offers must start inside period 5" and have it enforced on both the online form and the workbook. Dropdowns and multi-selects take an option list.

4. Press Save and continue

   The form's own save carries you to step 4. Saving creates a new schema version. Existing items keep the values they were submitted with, and remember which version they were submitted under.

Step 4. Suppliers

Step 4 is the participants screen. You are doing two things: saying which suppliers are in, and saying which contact can act for which supplier.

Participants & tags below lists everyone invited so far, with the tags each holds. Press Save and continue at the foot of the screen to move to the last step.

Step 5. Review and launch

Step 5 is a last look before anything is sent. Nothing here is a new setting: every panel is derived from what the first four steps set.

If a send fails, the invitation is not marked as sent and the sweep retries it, up to five attempts. You can see what went out, and what did not, in Library›Email log.

exit guide, at the right of the banner, leaves the wizard for the ordinary campaign overview. The campaign stays a draft, and the same Open campaign button is in the overview's Lifecycle panel.

Settings outside the guide

These are not wizard steps. They live on the campaign's own tabs once it exists, and you can set them before or after launch.

Co-managers

A co-manager has full campaign-manager rights on this campaign only, which is what covers a vacation or a shared desk. Choose a colleague and press Grant access. Every action stays attributed to whoever did it, so the audit trail still tells you who rejected what.

While it is open

The overview's Suppliers roster gives each supplier one of three states: Submitted, Draft for a supplier who has typed into the grid and not yet filed, and Not started, with the date they were invited and how often they have been reminded.

After it closes

At the end of the deadline day the campaign closes itself: supplier editing locks and every line moves from Pending with the supplier to Pending with you. From there the work is the Received tab, covered in Received.

If the campaign accepts late lines, suppliers can still file after the close. Each late line carries the Late flag on the Received table, and the supplier roster shows it beside Submitted when the newest line arrived after the deadline.

If you need to let one supplier back in on a campaign that closes, do not reopen the whole campaign: grant them an item-scoped or submission-scoped edit grant from the item screen. Reopening with a new deadline is available under Additional actions and re-notifies everybody, which is the right tool only when the whole round needs another pass.