Core Concepts: Scheduling & Automation

One of the most powerful features of CampaignBay is its ability to automatically start and stop your campaigns based on a schedule. This "set and forget" system allows you to plan your sales calendar in advance, ensuring your promotions run with precision.

This guide explains how the automation engine works.

How Scheduling Works: Statuses and Time

The automation is based on the interaction between the Status you select and the Schedule dates you define when creating or editing a campaign.

The Core Components

1. Select Status: This is your primary control over the campaign's state. It dictates how the campaign should behave upon saving.
2. Schedule: This checkbox and its associated Start Time and End Time fields are the triggers for the automation.

Understanding the Statuses (CRITICAL)

The status you choose has a very specific and immediate effect.

Active

• Effect: Instantly activates the campaign.
• Use Case: Choose this status only when you want the campaign to start applying discounts right now.

• Important

  A campaign set to Active will run immediately, ignoring any future "Start Time" you may have set. The "End Time" will still be respected.

Inactive

• Effect: Keeps the campaign in a manual draft mode.
• Use Case: Choose this to save your work on a campaign without it ever running. It will be completely ignored by the discount engine until you manually edit it and change its status.

Scheduled

• Effect: Puts the campaign in a "waiting" state, ready to be activated in the future.
• Use Case: This is the correct status to choose for any campaign that should start at a future date.
• Requirement: If you select Scheduled, setting a future "Start Time" is mandatory. The campaign will remain in this state until its start time is reached, at which point the system will automatically change its status to Active.

Expired

• Effect: This is an automatic status set by the system when an Active campaign's "End Time" is reached.
• Use Case: You cannot select this manually. It signifies that a campaign has finished its run.

The Automation Engine: Built for Reliability

CampaignBay uses a robust, two-part system to ensure your campaigns always run on time.

1. WordPress Cron Events

When you save a Scheduled campaign or an Active campaign with an end date, CampaignBay schedules a task (a "cron job") with WordPress. The built-in WordPress Cron system is designed to trigger these tasks at the precise moment they are due, automatically changing your campaign's status.

2. The CampaignBay Failsafe

We understand that on some hosting environments, the WordPress Cron system might be disabled. To solve this, CampaignBay includes a powerful failsafe mechanism that is always working for you in the background.

On a regular basis, our failsafe system manually checks all campaigns. If it finds any campaign where a scheduled time was missed because its cron job did not run, it will immediately correct the status.

Peace of Mind

This built-in failsafe guarantees that your campaign statuses will always be accurate and your sales will run on time, even if the underlying WordPress Cron system is not functioning on your server.

Next Steps

Now that you understand how scheduling works, let's explore the powerful targeting options available for all campaign types.

• Learn about Targeting & Conditions →