Welcome to Adobe Campaign Classic. In this video, we will be looking at managing approvals within your Campaign deliveries. By the end of this module, you’ll be able to differentiate between delivery and workflow approvals.

Let’s dive right in and begin looking at managing approvals.

We will begin by looking at configuring approvals on a Campaign. From the dashboard, select the edit tab and select the advanced Campaign parameters.

This will bring up the advanced settings window. Then select the approvals tab. Here, we’re able to set various job validations. Make sure the enable content approval box is ticked and select the reviewer by the dropdown arrow.

For this demo we will select ourselves.

This type of approval allows the operator access to proofs that are sent, which will enable the operator to confirm the content is appropriate and correct. We cover proofs in another video.

This type of approval is most common with email deliveries. You also have target approvals. These types of approvals are used for operators to validate that all targeting is appropriate in the delivery.

Budget validation is used when there are tasks containing budgeting and the operator needs to validate that this is correct. This is not required for this demo. Lastly, there is extraction approvals, and these are used for direct mail deliveries only and are required to allow the operator the ability to review files in a delivery before continuing, also not required for this demo. Make sure to close this window by clicking okay.

And make sure to click the save button to apply these changes.

My approvals are now set at the Campaign level. This is useful as now all my deliveries will inherit these settings. Approvals can also be set at the delivery level. In your workflow, create an email delivery.

Now double-click the email delivery step.

On the delivery settings window, click properties and go to the approvals tab.

You should see the same settings as defined at the Campaign level. Let enable target approval.

This approval is most appropriate for almost all deliveries. I will select a reviewer. In this case, it would be myself again.

By default, this tick box confirms the delivery before sending is selected. This is an additional confirmation that will prompt the operator to confirm the sending of deliveries after all approvals have been completed. This is useful to mitigate the risk of accidental delivery submissions. We can now click okay to complete the approvals.

Let’s add some dummy text, subject line and content and click okay.

Let’s start the workflow.

To see the approval process, let’s go to our dashboard.

Here we can see our delivery and a prompt to submit our content and have approval for targeting.

Let’s approve the content for now.

You are greeted with a window asking you to perform an action on this delivery, giving the option to accept or reject with a room for a comment. For now, let’s select content approval with accept selected.

The content has now been approved and all that’s left is approving the targeting. That is one way to approve.

The second way is to do it via email.

So what I’ll do instead is look at our email address, and you see a whole plethora of emails coming through. One of our emails is regarding the target.

We select this link and enter our credentials.

We will be greeted with a tab containing the same elements as our window in classic, asking you to accept or reject. In this case, let us accept for our target approval.

Let us go back to the interface.

Refresh the delivery.

You can see all approvals have been completed and all that’s left is to confirm the delivery.

We can view the history of the approval process through the delivery.

If we select open, we can look at the audit tab.

Select that, and you will see a plethora of logs pertaining to this delivery.

Navigate to the approvals tab and you’ll see the two actions approved for both target and content.

Now let’s have a look at workflow approvals. Unlike the delivery or Campaign approvals, you can set up an approval activity within a workflow. By doing this, you can create selection logic to target certain deliveries based on an approval step. Let’s add an approval activity to the workflow. Navigate through flow control and drag an approval activity into the workflow. The activity provides you with two branches labeled yes and no. Double click the activity to open the window.

Under assignment tab, you can select a group or an operator. For now, we will select operator. And in the assignee dropdown, we will select ourselves.

Select okay to complete.

Now we’re able to test this by taking this arrow and applying it to our approval, and taking this delivery and applying out yes branch to it.

Now to complete this, let’s add an end activity to the no.

Now we have a workflow where when run will hit this approval step, which will ask for approval. And depending on the outcome, will execute the respective branch.

I will click save and execute the branch.

As you can see, the workflow was executed and it’s pending approval, as you can see by the approval step blinking.

This approval will not appear in the Campaign dashboard as it is not a delivery. Instead, you will receive an email asking for your approval. This is the email you will receive with a link asking to reply. If we click this link, it will now ask us for our credentials.

You’ll now be greeted with a form asking for your answer in the approval phase. Let’s select yes and click submit.

It says our answer has been recorded. If we go back to Adobe Classic, we should see this branch get executed. Let’s refresh.

And as you can see, we now have the email delivery pending because of our answer we gave, and this branch got followed. You can now continue this workflow however best you please.

We have learned about delivery approvals; how they can be set at Campaign level or at an individual delivery level. These approvals are requested when a workflow executes the delivery and will not continue until all approvals are met. We learned how workflow approvals are different as they are used to great selection logic based on an approval outcome. Thanks for listening and I’ll see you next time. -