# Schedule a campaign

Canonical URL: https://support.optimonk.com/en/articles/schedule-a-campaign

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.

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## 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.

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## Add a schedule

1. Open the campaign from the **Campaigns** list.
2. Click the calendar icon (**Schedule**) in the campaign header, or open the **⋮** menu and choose **Edit schedule**.
3. 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.
4. 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.*

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## 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.

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## 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.

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## 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.