Milestones and reminders

A campaign has one deadline and any number of milestones hanging off it. Each milestone can send reminder emails a chosen number of days before or after itself. Because most milestones are expressed relative to the deadline, moving the deadline moves the whole plan.

The model

The editor

The same editor appears in two places: the Milestones & reminders card at Campaign›Setup & forms, available as soon as the campaign exists and before or after launch, and the plan builder at Library›Milestone plans. They are one component, so the two screens cannot drift apart. The campaign card is also step 2 of the guided wizard, so a new campaign gets its timeline before it gets its form.

Outside the wizard the same card carries At the deadline, the one rule the deadline enforces: Close means nothing can be filed after it, and Accept late lets suppliers keep filing, with every late line carrying a Late flag on the Received table. Choose, then press Save. See Create a standard campaign.

It has two halves.

• Left: the sequence. One row per milestone in date order, with the gap between consecutive rows written between them ("2 weeks later"). Each row carries its name, its position, its resolved date, and its reminder tokens.
• Right: the calendar. Two months, Sunday to Saturday, marking the deadline, the milestones, and any date the business-day rule moved. A segmented control switches it between Milestones and Reminders.

Adding and moving

1. Add a step

   Press Insert a step at the foot of the sequence. It arrives 14 days after the deadline with a single 5-day-before reminder; change it to whatever you meant.

2. Name it

   The name is what appears in the reminder email subject, so write it as the supplier will read it: Detail forms due, not DF.

3. Position it

   Type a number of days and pick before or after. The resolved date updates as you type, and the row reorders itself into date order.

4. Or move it on the calendar

   Press Move on the row. The button becomes Pick a day and the calendar becomes clickable; click a day and the milestone lands there. This is select-then-click rather than drag, so it works with a keyboard and on a touchscreen.

5. Remove it

   The red ✕ at the end of the row. The deadline row has no ✕.

Relative and fixed

On a campaign, each milestone row has a Relative / Fixed switch.

Relative is right for almost everything, because almost everything in a campaign is "a week before the deadline" rather than "the 8th". Fixed is for the dates that belong to the outside world: a trade show, a print deadline, the first day of a period.

In the plan builder there is no Relative/Fixed switch, because a plan has no deadline: every row in a plan is an offset by definition. The plan builder instead shows a Modelling against date at the top, a stand-in deadline that lets you see real dates while you build. It is remembered so the plan reopens looking the way you left it, and it is never applied to a campaign.

Business days

The bar above the sequence toggles Milestone dates only on business days for the whole campaign or plan. It is colour-signified: green when on, grey when off, with the state spelled out in words beside it.

When the rule moves a date, the row shows the original struck through with an arrow to the new one, and the calendar marks both: the vacated day greyed and struck through, the new day with a ↻.

Each milestone row also carries a ↻ business days chip on its right. It shows green when the rule applies to that row and greyed out when it does not, and it reads from plan while the row is simply inheriting the campaign setting. Press it to opt one milestone out; press it again to go back to inheriting.

Reminders

The lower half of each row is its reminder strip: the word Remind, then one chip per offset, then Add.

1. Add an offset

   Press Add, type a number of days, choose before or after, and press Add.

2. Read the chips

   A grey chip is a before-reminder; an amber chip is an after-reminder. The deadline row is dark, so its before-chips are dark too, and its amber after-chips still stand out.

3. Remove one

   The ✕ on the chip.

Before and after

A before-reminder warns: the deadline is in 3 days. An after-reminder chases: this was due 3 days ago. The second is the one that used to require a phone call.

Every reminder goes to every invited contact on the campaign who is not suppressed, including the ones who have already submitted. The wording comes from the milestone_reminder template, editable at Email templates, and each send is recorded in the email log.

The send calendar

Switch the calendar panel to Reminders and it stops showing milestones and starts showing email. Each day carries a dot per send: grey for a before-reminder, amber for an after-reminder. A day with more than one send gets a ring around it.

Above the months, four counts for the whole plan:

Milestone plans

A cadence you use repeatedly belongs in Library›Milestone plans. A plan stores offsets and reminder configuration, never dates.

Plans are org-wide. One good plan applied across a year of campaigns is what makes your suppliers able to predict you, which is worth more than any individual reminder. See Tips and tricks.