There are situations when you only want to show your message during a given period — Valentine's Day, Black Friday, a weekend sale. This is what scheduling is for: you set a start (and optionally an end), and OptiMonk switches the campaign on and off for you.
Campaign status: Active and Inactive
Open Campaigns in the left menu to see all of your campaigns. A new campaign is Inactive: it does not show on your site at all. It becomes Active — shown to your visitors according to your targeting rules — when you switch it on.
The switch lives in the top right of the campaign, next to the status label.
A schedule does not add a third status; it takes over the switch. While a schedule is in effect, the toggle is locked and the tooltip says Managed by the schedule — only the schedule decides when the campaign runs.
Two more states can block the switch, and each one says so:
Under construction — the popup is still being built. You can switch the campaign on once the popup is built.
Archived — Restore the campaign from the archive before making it live. An archived campaign cannot be scheduled either.
Add a schedule
Open the campaign from the Campaigns list.
Click the calendar icon (Schedule) in the campaign header, or open the ⋮ menu and choose Edit schedule.
The Schedule campaign panel opens:
Timezone — the time zone your start and end times are meant in. It defaults to your browser's zone.
Start — the date and time from which the campaign should be shown.
End — choose No end date to let it run until you remove the schedule, or On a specific date and pick the date and time when it should stop.
Click Save.
Saving a schedule switches the campaign on in OptiMonk, so you don't have to activate it separately — the campaign starts showing at the start time and stops at the end time. If the campaign has not been published yet, the schedule is stored and the header says Saved — starts once the campaign reaches OptiMonk.
If something is missing, the panel tells you: Pick a start date and time., Pick an end date and time, or choose "No end date"., or The end must be after the start.
What you see once a campaign is scheduled
The campaign header shows a strip with Start, End (or Never), and the current state: Currently active, Currently inactive, or Ended in red once the end time has passed.
In the Campaigns list, a scheduled campaign carries a Scheduled badge; hover it to see the start and end. Once the window is over, the badge turns red and reads Ended. You can also filter the list by Status → Scheduled.
Note: when a schedule ends, OptiMonk stops showing the campaign, but the status flag stays on — that is why the header says Ended instead of Currently active. The toggle is unlocked again at that point, so you can switch the campaign off (or on) by hand.
Change or remove a schedule
Open the campaign, click the calendar icon (or ⋮ → Edit schedule), and:
change the timezone, start or end, then click Save — this reschedules the campaign;
or click Delete schedule to remove it entirely.
Removing the schedule does not switch the campaign off — it only hands control back to you, so check the toggle afterwards and set the campaign to Active or Inactive as you want it.
What is not in the schedule
The schedule is one continuous period: a start, and an end or no end. Selecting days of the week (for example weekends only) or an hourly From–To window inside each day is not part of it, and neither is scheduling relative to the visitor's own time zone — a schedule is always interpreted in the time zone you pick. If you need a recurring or hour-of-day rule, use the classic OptiMonk admin for that campaign.