Accelerator 25.1.1 Release Notes

Engineering Support

Updated March 26, 2025 15:16

Initiatives Released

Marketing Campaign Refresh

We’ve reimagined the Marketing campaign experience to make bulk messaging faster and more seamless than ever. The new Overview page streamlines campaign setup with three clear sections - Who, What, and When - so you can configure and review every detail with precision. This update enhances workflow efficiency by incorporating channel and push app selection into the creation workflow, simplifying template and audience selection later. A template preview now appears upon selection, so marketers can confirm their choice instantly. Additionally, recurring schedules now support minute, hourly, and monthly intervals, and display the next 10 launch times for added clarity and confidence prior to launch.

The new Marketing campaign experience is currently behind a feature flag while we wrap up some final polish on the functionality. If you would like to be an early adopter of the new UI you can have a technical resource to enable it by following the steps below. Please reach out to the MessageGears CS team should you have any questions or need assistance enabling it.

1. In the accelerator config dir, set the accel.feature.ui.marketing.overview=true parameter

➜ cd /opt/messagegears/conf
➜ echo "accel.feature.ui.marketing.overview=true" >> features.properties

2. Restart Accelerator

Goals

Update the UI for Marketing Campaigns, introducing new Overview page and settings
Improve template and audience selection via channel filtering
Support new recurrence options and launch schedule display
Add un-rendered content preview to help with template review

Capabilities

Channel selection

Marketers can specify their campaign’s channel(s) while in the campaign creation workflow. If the Accelerator instance only supports a single channel, that channel is automatically selected. Selecting Multi-channel allows for selecting any combination of Email, Push, and SMS channels. If the Push channel is selected, the push apps are made available for selection.

New campaign creation flow allows for channel selection up front

Campaign Overview

After saving the campaign, marketers are directed to the new Campaign Overview page. The Campaign settings are organized into distinct cards - Who, What, When, (and Advanced) - to guide you through building your campaign. You must complete the Who and What sections before you can test, launch, or schedule your campaign through the When section.

New Overview page organizes campaign settings into distinct sections

Campaign Content

The What card shows all the information about the campaign's content, including the header details, template name, supplemental data, and an unrendered preview. In Multi-channel campaigns, a distinct tab is shown for each channel.

The "What" card displays the template details and preview

Clicking “Add” or “Edit” opens up the What modal, where the marketer can define the content settings:

Template (pre-filtered based on campaign’s channels)
Supplemental data
Data variables
Subject line
Preheader

New "What" section contains all the campaign's content settings

Campaign Audience

The Who card shows the campaign’s audience settings, including:

Target audience
Total users
Last counted timestamp + query time
Data variables
Blueprint Filters button

The "Who" card displays the audience and campaign trigger details

Clicking “Add” or “Edit” opens the Who modal, where the marketer can define the campaign’s audience criteria. Marketing campaigns targeting Email, Push, or SMS support two audience types:

Audience or Blueprint
User lists

Audience or Blueprint

After selecting a Target audience or Blueprint, refreshing the audience the count returns the total number of recipients and recipients per channel. If the Audience or Blueprint contains data variables, they are surfaced in the Data variables section.

Audience settings are now configured in the "What" section

If the Blueprint contains a snapshot, a Blueprint snapshot field is displayed where the snapshot can be enabled for the campaign. Enabling the snapshot exposes the snapshot details: Data age, Status, Population, Next Refresh.

When enabled, the Blueprint snapshot's details are displayed

If a Blueprint is selected, the Who card displays a Blueprint filter button that opens to the Blueprint, where marketers can select the nodes to target.

Use the Blueprint’s nodes to define your campaign’s target audience

User List

Selecting User list allows the marketer to upload a static list of recipients. When uploading a new Recipient File, all files must be UTF-8 encoded.

Campaign Schedule

The When card displays your campaign's schedule details, where you will access detailed sending options for the campaign, including recurring sends. There are three schedule types - Unscheduled, One-time, and Recurring.

The campaign can only be launched or scheduled after you've selected your Template and Target audience.

The "When" card displays the campaign schedule details

Unscheduled

This is the default for new campaigns and allows marketers to launch campaigns ad hoc. When the campaign is unscheduled, a Launch button is displayed on the Overview page.

One Time

This option is for a single send in the future. One-time scheduling allows you to schedule the campaign launch at your preferred time, regardless of your personal schedule or local time zone.

Schedule One-time campaigns through the "When" section

Recurring

This schedule type enables recurring campaign launches, similar to One-time scheduling but set to repeat at designated intervals. It also allows for windowing between a start and end time, as well as the ability to send at sub-day intervals.

The Next launch panel on the right shows the next 10 scheduled launches, allowing you to review and ensure the launches match your expectations after configuring your schedule settings.

Define the the schedule recurrence and granular send intervals

The Recurrence setting now supports the intervals - Minutes, Hourly, Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Quartz Cron Trigger - and the length of time between sends (for example, every 3 Hours).

Weekly recurrence sends on a recurring basis on the days of the week you specify. The campaign's Start date day is automatically applied and cannot be unselected.

Use "Weekly" recurrence to send emails on specific days of the week

The new End options allow marketers to define when recurring deliveries should stop - either on a specific date, or after a set number launches.

Define when the recurring campaign should stop sending, using the new "End" settings

Campaign Launch

While unscheduled campaigns are launched from the Overview page, One-time and Recurring campaigns are scheduled for launch when you save your schedule settings. In either scenario, a dialog box appears with a summary of the campaign settings, allowing you to confirm the details before launching.

The launch modal’s notification email address field allows you to provide an address to receive error notifications related to this campaign. Check the Include Progress Updates box if you want the notification email address to receive additional job progress updates as well as error notifications.

Launch a campaign with a defined schedule

Advanced

The Advanced card contains additional settings you can use to optimize your campaign:

Campaign Identifier - included as a header on the mailing (supports FreeMarker interpreted fields such as ${seedlist.campaignName})
Seedlists - email addresses automatically added to a recipient list for the purpose of testing and monitoring the campaign’s content rendering
URL Append - supports adding parameters to all links in the campaign, such as Google Analytics UTM strings or other parameters for internal analytics.

Use the Advanced section to configure additional campaign settings

Blueprint Canvas Refresh

Use Case

We’re thrilled to bring a brand new canvas experience to Blueprints. The process of segmenting your Audiences has never been easier, as we’re introducing brand new node designs and elements to make larger Blueprints easier to understand from a bird’s eye view. With this update, nodes will show associated campaign counts, surface labels for more visibility, and introduce new colors to help you sort through your segmentations faster. We’ve also introduced smooth zoom controls, and a brand new mini map for those larger canvases to make navigation easier than ever.