Campaigns

A campaign is a themed, time-bound submission window inside a single category. You announce a topic ("How can we cut onboarding time in half?"), set a start and end, and ideas submitted through the campaign use the category's criteria locked in at the moment the campaign was created.

Campaigns are available on the Growth and Scale plans.

What a campaign is

A campaign differs from a regular submission window in three ways.

• Time-gated. A campaign has a start, an end, and a separate review tail. Submissions are accepted during the active window only; review can continue after submissions close.
• Frozen criteria. When you create a campaign, the parent category's criteria and weights are copied onto the campaign. Edits to the original category afterwards do not change the rubric for ideas already submitted to this campaign.
• Campaign-specific reviewers and announcements. You can assign a dedicated reviewer pool, set rotation rules, and tune which channels receive launch and reminder announcements.

Lifecycle states

A campaign moves through a known set of states.

| State | Meaning | |---|---| | draft | Newly created and not yet published. Visible to admins only. | | scheduled | Published. Start time hasn't arrived; transitions to active automatically when it does. | | active | Accepting submissions. Members see the campaign in the sidebar. | | reviewing | Submissions closed, reviewers are still scoring. | | ended | Past the review tail. No more reviews accepted. | | completed | Results have been published. Winners and featured ideas are visible. | | archived | Admin-soft-stopped. The campaign is hidden from members. | | cancelled | Aborted by an admin before completion. |

Creating a campaign

1. From the sidebar, open Campaigns, then click New campaign.
2. Pick a Category. The category is locked once the campaign is created and drives the rubric.
3. Write a Title and Description. The description supports rich text.
4. Set Starts at and Ends at, the submission window. Set Review ends at for the deadline by which reviewers must finish.
5. Optionally write a Reward description, set a per-submitter cap, allow anonymous submissions, and pick a cover image.
6. Configure the Reviewer pool (which coordinators are eligible to score campaign submissions) and the rotation rule.
7. Configure Notifications (Slack, email, reminder cadence).
8. Save as draft, or publish.

A draft can be edited freely. Once published, the category and the criteria snapshot are immutable.

What members see

While a campaign is active, members see it in the sidebar with its title, description, cover image, and a Submit to this campaign button. Submitting through the campaign locks the category to the campaign's category and applies the campaign's criteria.

When the campaign moves to reviewing, the submit button disappears for members; reviewers continue to score.

When the campaign moves to completed, members see the announced winners on the campaign page.

What happens to ideas in a closed campaign

Ideas submitted to a campaign keep their campaign_id and progress through normal idea status (in_review , scored , approved, rejected, or needs_discussion) using the campaign's frozen criteria. Closing the campaign affects only whether new submissions are accepted; ideas already in flight are scored, decided, and tracked exactly like ideas submitted outside a campaign.

Picking winners

Winners are curated manually by an admin. There is no automatic "top three" by score; the admin picks, with the weighted scores and the category ranking view as their reference.

1. With the campaign in reviewing or completed, open it.
2. Click Select winners.
3. Add ideas to the winner list, one row per winner, with a rank (1, 2, 3, ...) and an optional prize description.
4. Save.

Ranks must be sequential starting at 1. The system replaces the existing winner list atomically; you can re-pick winners up until results are published.

Winners are surfaced on the campaign page once results are published. Submitter names appear unless the original idea was submitted anonymously.

Caution

Once you've published results and the campaign is completed, the winner list is final. You can still archive or cancel the campaign, but the published winners stay on the timeline.

Tier gating

Campaigns are not available on the Starter plan. The New campaign button on Starter is disabled with an upgrade tooltip; clicking it opens the upgrade modal. Upgrading to Growth removes the gate and lets you run unlimited concurrent campaigns.

What's next

Categories and criteria

Categories and criteria covers the rubric campaigns inherit.

Coordinators

Coordinators explains the role you'll assign to a campaign's reviewer pool.

Slack integration

Slack integration covers the /challenge slash command for submitting from Slack.