Knowledge
KnowledgeBase

Scheduling a Campaign: Send Now or Schedule for Later

The final step of the campaign builder asks one question: When should we send this? You can send immediately, or schedule the campaign for a specific date and time. The same panel handles both email and WhatsApp campaigns.

Before you start#

Scheduling is the last step of the campaign builder, so your content and audience should already be set. The panel reads your organisation's configured timezone and shows it as read-only, so all scheduled times are interpreted in that zone — make sure your org timezone is correct before scheduling. Building the campaign itself is covered in Send an Email Campaign and Send a WhatsApp Campaign.

Choose when to send#

  1. In the When should we send this? panel, pick one of the two options.
  2. For Send now, click Send Now and confirm in the dialog. The campaign begins sending immediately.
  3. For Schedule for later, pick a Date and Time, check the Timezone, then click Schedule Campaign.
  4. Before committing, click Send a test to preview and send yourself a test of the campaign.

The two modes#

  • Send now — described as Send this campaign immediately. In this mode the panel shows only the Send Now action, since a date and time are irrelevant.
  • Schedule for later — described as Choose a date and time. Selecting it reveals the date, time and timezone fields, and shows both a Schedule Campaign button and a Send Now fallback so you can still send immediately if you change your mind.

The date, time and timezone fields#

  • Date — a calendar picker (Pick a date). Past dates are disabled, so you can only schedule today or later.
  • Time — a time picker, defaulting to 09:00.
  • Timezone — read-only, pulled from your organisation's settings. The date and time you pick are interpreted as wall-clock time in this zone, so “1:20 PM” means 1:20 PM in your org's timezone regardless of where you or your recipients are.
💡
Because the timezone is fixed to your organisation's setting, you never have to do timezone math — the time you see in the picker is the time the campaign will actually go out.

Confirming a “Send now”#

Clicking Send Now opens a confirmation dialog titled Send campaign now?. It states that this will start sending the campaign to a specific number of recipients immediately and that the action cannot be undone, showing the exact recipient count. Choose Cancel to back out or Send Now to proceed.

⚠️
Sending cannot be undone. The confirmation dialog spells out the exact recipient count — check that number before you confirm.

Sending a test first#

The Send a test button opens the full Preview & test modal used elsewhere in the builder, so you can verify the final template and settings one last time. Any last-minute edits you make are saved before the test fires, so the test reflects exactly what you are about to send rather than an earlier draft.

Email and WhatsApp#

This panel drives both channels — it reads the campaign's channel and behaves the same whether you are sending an email or a WhatsApp broadcast. The recipient-count confirmation, the schedule options, and the test send all apply either way.

Good to know#

  • Schedule Campaign stays disabled until you have picked a date, so you cannot accidentally schedule an empty time.
  • Switching back to Send now clears any scheduled time you had set.
  • Your scheduled time is stored precisely against your org timezone, so re-opening the panel shows the same wall-clock time you originally chose.
Scheduling the first send also sets the clock for any automatic follow-up to non-openers, since that delay is measured from when the original send completes.

Ready to implement this?

OpenAI Engage and apply what you just learned to your own workspace.

Open AI Engage CRM