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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2025-03-14
Concept: Campaigns and Scheduled Distributions

Concept: Campaigns and Scheduled Distributions

We plan to retire Campaigns in a future release. Workday recommends that you use Engagement Builder for greater efficiency and visibility into your engagements. See Setup Considerations: Engagement Builder.
Campaigns and scheduled distributions use Workday notifications to schedule the delivery of content to target audiences.

Campaigns

Campaigns enable you to group multiple items of content (campaign items) into 1 group (a campaign), and deliver each item as an individual notification to target audiences. You can customize how and when campaign audience members receive the notifications by customizing both the campaign and the items within it. Some campaign configuration settings include:
  • Item delivery schedule.
  • Item due date.
  • Notification channel.
  • Notification message.
  • Target audience.

Scheduled Distributions

Scheduled distributions are similar to campaigns, but require less configuration. Scheduled distributions simplify how you schedule and deliver a single item of content. You can configure a message to accompany the item and send them both to an audience on a specified frequency. You can send only these content types using the
Create Scheduled Distribution
 task:
  • Surveys
  • Worker Notifications

Campaign and Distribution Types

Campaign and Distribution types can differ in:
  • How you can create the target audience.
  • The individuals administering them.
  • The type of content that you can send.
  • The delivery frequencies available.
Example: You can use the:
  • Learning
     campaign type to create campaigns that promote courses, lesson content, and notifications to target audiences.
  • Survey
     campaign type to create campaigns that promote surveys and notifications.

Launching Campaigns

You can launch campaigns using 1 of these tasks:
Task
Description
Launch / Schedule Campaign
Enables you to launch a single campaign manually.
Recommended for ad-hoc schedules or large-volume campaigns. A large-volume campaign is one that processes over 100,000 items during a run. To determine if you have a large-volume campaign, multiply the number of audience members by the number of items delivered in the run.
Workday displays the most recently calculated audience size on the task so that you can ensure that the campaign you're launching is associated with the correct audience.
Schedule Campaign Run
Enables you to define a tenant-wide schedule that Workday uses to find active campaigns and send associated campaign items to eligible audience members. This schedule applies to any active campaign in your tenant that you don't launch using the
Launch / Schedule Campaign
 task.
Recommended for regularly scheduled campaigns. Optimized to run concurrent campaigns.
Since you can only select 1 recurrence for a schedule, Workday recommends that you create multiple schedules. Example: You have an active campaign and you configured to send the second campaign item 3 days after the first item. You only set 1 schedule to run weekly on a Monday, and Lisa completes the first item on a Wednesday. Lisa doesn't receive the notification for the second item until the next Monday.

Campaign Item Reminders

You can configure up to 3 reminder notifications for a campaign item. You can specify a unique message, notification channel, and delivery schedule for a reminder.
Reminder notifications have separate delivery schedules from the campaign items that they're associated with. If you change the
Run Frequency
 on the
Launch / Schedule Campaign
 or
Schedule Campaign Run
 tasks, the reminder schedule won't change.
You can send a reminder notification:
Option
Description
On the campaign item due date.
Workday uses the campaign audience member's time zone when you specify a time for Workday to send a reminder notification on the associated campaign item due date.
Relative to the campaign item due date.
You can specify a number of days or weeks before or after a campaign item due date for Workday to send the reminder.
Workday uses the campaign audience member's time zone when you specify a time for Workday to send a reminder notification relative to the associated campaign item due date.
On a recurring basis.
The number of recurrences you specify doesn't include the primary reminder. Depending on when the recipient completes the associated campaign item, they might receive the maximum number of recurring reminders plus the primary reminder.
Example: Betty configures a campaign item with these attributes:
  • Send Date: 2021-01-01
  • Due Date: 2021-01-08
Betty configures a reminder notification for the campaign item with these attributes:
  • Send primary reminder 6 days before campaign item due date (2021-01-02).
  • Send recurring reminders daily.
  • Stop sending reminders after Workday sends a maximum of 3 reminders.
When a campaign audience member, Janet, doesn't complete the campaign item by 2021-01-08, Janet receives a total of 4 reminders: 1 primary and 3 recurrences.
You can access the
Scheduled Future Processes
 report to edit the recurrence schedule. See Manage Scheduled Future Processes.
You can also create reminder notifications for campaign items in previously created campaigns. Workday sends the reminder notification only to the audience members who receive the campaign item after you add the reminder.

Dashboards

You can add these dashboards to your Home page so that you can create and manage your campaigns and scheduled distributions in 1 place:
  • Campaigns
  • Connect
  • Scheduled Distributions