Manage Campaigns

Once a campaign is created, you manage it through its lifecycle: run or activate it, stop it mid-send, retry failed recipients, duplicate it for reuse, or archive and delete it. This page covers each action and how campaigns move between statuses.

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Campaign Lifecycle

One-time campaigns move from draft to sending to sent. You can stop a campaign mid-send and retry later. Recurring campaigns follow the same pattern, but the parent series manages the schedule and each fire creates a new run that has its own delivery lifecycle. The campaign detail page always shows the current status and the actions available at that stage.

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Running a One-Time Campaign

To send a one-time campaign, open it from the campaign list and click Run. A confirmation dialog shows the recipient count and schedule summary so you can verify before sending. What happens when you run depends on the schedule type:

• Immediate — Serval begins delivering messages to all recipients right away.
• Scheduled — If the chosen time is in the future, the campaign waits until then. If the time has already passed, messages send immediately.
• Local time — Serval groups recipients by timezone and delivers to each batch at the appropriate local time.

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Activating a Recurring Campaign

Recurring campaigns use Activate instead of Run. Open the series campaign and click Activate. A confirmation dialog explains that the schedule will begin firing automatically. Once activated:

• If Run immediately is enabled (the default), the first run starts right away.
• Subsequent runs are created automatically each time the schedule fires.
• Each run appears on the Runs tab of the parent campaign, where you can drill into its delivery and response data.

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Stopping and Resuming

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Stopping a one-time campaign

Click Stop on a running or scheduled campaign. Messages already delivered are not recalled, but messages not yet sent are skipped.

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Pausing a recurring campaign

Click Pause on an active series. No new runs are created while the schedule is paused. Any run that was already in progress continues its own send lifecycle independently.

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Resuming a recurring campaign

Click Resume on a paused series. The schedule resumes from the next fire time. Serval does not retroactively create runs for fires that were missed while paused.

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Retrying Failed or Unsent Recipients

If some messages fail to deliver (e.g., the recipient isn’t reachable via the configured channel) or you stopped a campaign before all messages were sent, you can retry those recipients.

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Bulk retry

Open a stopped or completed campaign and click Run again. Serval offers to retry all unsent and failed recipients without re-sending to recipients who already received the message.

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Single recipient retry

On the Conversations tab, find the specific recipient who failed and click Retry. Serval attempts delivery to just that person.

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Duplicating a Campaign

You can duplicate any campaign to create a new draft based on its configuration. Open the actions menu and select Duplicate. Serval copies the following into a new draft:

• Campaign name and description
• Message template
• Schedule configuration (including recurring schedule, if applicable)
• Target recipients (users and groups)

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Cross-team duplication

When duplicating, you can choose to create the copy in a different team. If multiple teams need to send similar communications, duplicate the campaign and adjust the recipients and details for each team. After duplicating, the new campaign opens as a draft so you can review and modify it before running.

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Archiving a Campaign

You can archive campaigns you no longer need in your active list. Open the actions menu and select Archive. Archived campaigns are hidden from the main campaign list but can be viewed in the archived campaigns view and unarchived if needed.

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Deleting a Campaign

You can delete a campaign that is still in draft. Open the actions menu and select Delete to permanently remove it.

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