Skip to main content
The campaign wizard guides you through creating a campaign in five steps: basics, recipients, schedule, message (including optional response workflow), and review. You can save your progress at any step and return later. The wizard preserves your draft in the browser session.
You need the Builder role or higher to create campaigns. Your team must also have the Campaigns capability enabled and a messaging integration (e.g., Slack) connected.

​
Creating a New Campaign

1

Open the wizard

Navigate to Campaigns in the sidebar and click New Campaign. The wizard opens on the Basics step.
2

Set the basics

Enter a Name and optional Description for your campaign.
3

Choose your recipients

Select how you want to target recipients:
  • Users & Groups — Pick individual users and/or existing Serval user groups. All members of the selected groups receive the campaign message.
  • CSV — Upload a CSV file containing recipient email addresses. The CSV must include an email column. You can also include timezone and any custom columns that become template variables in your message.
The wizard validates your selection and shows a preview of resolved recipients before you continue.
For CSV uploads, the wizard checks for formatting issues and displays any row-level errors so you can fix them before proceeding. See Recipients for detailed CSV formatting requirements.
4

Set the schedule

First choose whether this is a one-time or recurring campaign:
  • One-time — Send once. Pick immediate, a specific scheduled time, or local time per recipient.
  • Recurring — Send on a repeating schedule. Configure the frequency (e.g., every Monday, the 1st of each month) and delivery mode.
See Scheduling for details on all scheduling options.
5

Write your message and attach a workflow

Compose your campaign message using the rich text editor. You can format text with bold, italic, lists, and links.Use template variables to personalize the message for each recipient. Standard variables include:
VariableDescription
{{Recipient.FirstName}}Recipient’s first name
{{Recipient.LastName}}Recipient’s last name
{{Recipient.FullName}}Recipient’s full name
{{Recipient.Email}}Recipient’s email address
If you uploaded a CSV with additional columns, those column headers are also available as template variables with a CSV. prefix. For example, a CSV column named department becomes {{CSV.department}} in the message editor.Response workflow (optional): To collect structured feedback, select a deployed workflow that uses form confirmation. When recipients receive your campaign message, they see a Respond button. Tapping it opens the workflow’s form directly in the conversation.The form can include any workflow input types: multiple choice, scales, short text, dates, checkboxes, and file uploads. The review step lets you preview the form as recipients will see it.Because each response is a real workflow run, you can wire branching and actions into the workflow itself. If you don’t need to collect responses, leave this unset.
6

Review and save

The review step summarizes your campaign configuration: name, recipient count and resolution mode, schedule, message preview, and response workflow (if any).Review the details and click Save to create the campaign as a draft. It won’t send until you explicitly run or activate it.

​
Editing a Draft Campaign

You can edit any campaign that hasn’t been run or activated yet. Open the campaign from the list and click Edit. The wizard reopens with your saved values so you can update any step.
Once a campaign has been run or activated, you can no longer edit its configuration. If you need to make changes, stop the campaign and duplicate it with the corrected settings.