Creating Campaigns

Refer to the Launching campaign programs documentation for guidelines on planning, gaining approval, testing and launching your campaign within your organization.

There are several ways to create your campaign, including installing a campaign from Nexthink Library and triggering it without any customization. You can also create a copy of a campaign from Nexthink Library or create a custom campaign from scratch or with the support of Nexthink Assist.

Installing a campaign from Nexthink Library

To install a campaign from Nexthink Library:

Select Nexthink Library from the main menu.
Search for the campaign library pack or library content you wish to install.
Install the content. Refer to the Nexthink Library documentation for more information.
Navigate back to the Campaigns administration page where you can edit and customize the library campaign to your needs:
- Customize the sender name and image.
- Review and adjust questions.
- Publish the campaign when you are ready to use it.

You can update the previously installed library campaigns if a newer version is available.

All configurations will be lost after you update a library campaign from the Nexthink Library module. Only campaigns in a Draft state retain the data structure of ongoing and past campaigns.

Creating a copy of a campaign from Nexthink Library

Use a copy of a library campaign as a starting point for a custom campaign. This approach allows you to jump-start the campaign creation process while retaining flexibility over the customization of the content.

Creating a copy of a campaign allows you to create multiple, similar campaigns quickly. Let’s say you wanted to create multiple sentiment campaigns for employees in different regions. Search for the Digital Experience - Sentiment campaign in the Nexthink Library module and create multiple copies of it, one for each region. Then, adjust each campaign for each region as you see fit.

Select Nexthink Library from the main menu.
Search for the campaign library content of which you wish to create a custom copy.
Create a copy of the content. Refer to the Nexthink Library documentation for more information.
The system redirects you to the Create campaign page where you can:
- Choose a custom name and NQL ID for the campaign.
- Customize the sender name and image.
- Review and adjust questions.
- Publish the campaign when you are ready to use it.

Creating a custom campaign

To create a new custom campaign with the support of Nexthink Assist refer to the Using Nexthink Assist documentation. To create a new custom campaign from scratch:

Select Campaign from the main menu.
Click on the New button in the navigation menu.

Configuring general campaign settings

Configure the General tab of a campaign:

Enter the campaign name, NQL ID and description.
- Once you have saved the campaign you cannot edit its NQL ID.
Select the Trigger option. Refer to Types of campaigns for more information.
Set campaign Priority:
- Urgent campaigns are delivered to users as soon as they are published, while still respecting the 20-minute protection period to avoid sending multiple campaigns too frequently. Refer to Urgency of campaigns for more information.
- Mandatory campaigns cannot be declined, postponed or minimized.
Configure campaign Parameters, which you can use as variables or placeholders to personalize the text of the questions. Refer to Parameters for Manual, API and Workflow campaigns for more information.
Enable Multiple languages and select languages into which you want to translate your campaign. You can translate your campaign content in the Translation tab.
Use the Sender toggle to show or hide sender information (name, title, and image) on the campaign pop-up. This option is enabled by default. Disable this option to omit sender details.
- Disabling the sender may be appropriate for follow-up campaigns in a workflow, or when the message does not require personalization.

On endpoints running Collector version 2025.6 or later, the entire footer with sender information can be hidden. On older collectors, the footer remains visible but empty.

Creating campaign content

Create questions for the employees. Click on the Add new question button to start. The campaign must have at least one question other than the final message before you can publish it. Choose from different types of questions: single answer, multiple choice, option scale, net promoter score (NPS) and a final message from the modal. Refer to the Types of questions and Controlling the flow of questions documentation for more information.

Translating a campaign

Translate the campaign's content into different languages to ensure a good understanding of the message you wish to convey to your employees.

The system translates fixed UI elements, such as buttons, for the following languages: Afrikaans, Arabic, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish and Vietnamese.

Scheduling a campaign

Select the Schedule checkbox in the General tab to enable the scheduling of campaigns.

Targeting query

Write an NQL query to define who receives a campaign. You can use queries that return users in the following forms:

Query that starts with users. These queries allow the employee to see the campaign on any of their devices.
Query that starts with devices and return a column user_sid in its list statement (query must include| list ..., user_sid, ...). These queries target users with device issues, showing the campaign only on the corresponding device. For example, the last users of devices that experienced system crashes in the last week:
```
devices past 7d
| with device_performance.system_crashes past 7d
| with session.events past 7d
| compute user_sid = user.sid.last()
| list user_sid
```

To target a specific VDI session instead of a device, you must run a query for VDI sessions.

Targeting a campaign at a specific user deploys it to all devices assigned to that user.

Targeting a campaign at a specific VDI session deploys it to the virtual device corresponding to that session.

The system evaluates the query after the campaign is published and sends it based on the option that you selected in the Target users will receive the campaign section. Refer to the Campaigns NQL examples for query examples.

Target employees will receive the campaign

Choose one of the following options to define how the system sends the campaign.

Once you publish the campaign, you cannot change this setting. To change the schedule, you need to retire the campaign.

Only once: The campaign will only be sent once to the employee, and will never recur. Use this option, for example, for employee onboarding campaigns, one-time surveys or notifications, and other one-time communications. With this option, the system evaluates the NQL query every 24 hours after the campaign is published to identify new employees to target. Employees who answered or declined the campaign stop seeing the campaign.

Again after: Select this option to enable recurring campaigns. Use it, for example, for proactive fixes, a reminder to restart computers regularly, or for surveys that need to be sent at specific intervals. To provide more immediate feedback, the system evaluates the campaign every hour. To protect employees from unnecessary interruption, they will not receive the campaign if they have already answered it or declined it within the selected timeframe. For example, if you choose the campaign to be resent again after one week, the system will resend it seven days after the employee has either answered or declined the campaign. If you choose one month, the system will resend it 30 days after the employee has either answered or declined the campaign.

If the user is targeted at a given time, they receive the campaign even if the NQL query no longer returns the user later. Reevaluation ends when you retire the campaign.

Set up continuous employee sampling using NQL

You can set up the query to randomly select a different sample of employees and continuously collect sentiment data. Replace #dex_campaign_name with the campaign NQL ID and adjust the limit to specify the number of new users the campaign targets each hour.

Note that you need to:

Define the Schedule trigger method on the General tab.
Select Again after from the Target employees will receive the campaign section and provide the minimum number of days you want between responses for each employee.
Save the campaign at least once before using the NQL query below. This ensures the system recognizes your campaign and avoids a Table does not exist error during NQL query validation.

Refer to Scheduling recurring campaign for more information.

Authoring and formatting content of a campaign

Rich text formatting

Enhance employee experience by formatting campaign questions and the campaign’s final message using the rich text editor of the Text field. The text formatting options include bold on macOS endpoints; and underline, italics, hyperlinks, different font sizes, bullet points, and line breaks on macOS and Windows endpoints. Leverage different text sizes by using larger text to emphasize the question and smaller text for greetings and introductory text.

Personalizing questions and final message

Personalize your campaign questions by including the employee's name. To achieve this, use placeholders such as {colleague} or {user}within the Text fields—do not use these placeholders in the Choice text fields reserved for campaign answers.

Consider the following when using {colleague} or {user} placeholders:

The system first attempts to retrieve the user given name from the operating system.
If the given name is unavailable or a security restriction blocks that request, the system tries to retrieve the user full name instead.
If the full name is also unavailable, the system defaults to the current user login name (generally, the username used for signing in the device). When previewing the campaign the placeholder is not substituted and appears as is.

For parametric campaigns, personalize question-related Text fields further by including the {{parameter_id}} placeholder. The system replaces this placeholder with the parameter ID given when sending the campaign.

Formatting hyperlinks

A hyperlink must have the appropriate format depending on the link type. Currently, Nexthink supports http, https, mailto, im:sip and schemes links.

Examples

Web link: https://www.example.com/campaign-info
Email link: mailto:[email protected]?subject=Optional%20subject
Instant messaging links: im:sip:username
Self-service software portals links: softwarecenter:SoftwareID=ScopeId_<ScopeID>/Application_<ApplicationID> companyportal:ApplicationId=<ApplicationID> jamfselfservice://content?entity=<content_type>&id=<content_id>&action=view

Enter the desired text into the Text field and select part of it. Click on the insert icon to provide an URL. Click on the Add link button to insert the link into the selected part of the text.

If you want to parametrize the destination URL of a hyperlink in your campaign text, refer to the appropriate use cases in the Types of campaigns documentation.

When an employee clicks a link in a campaign, the operating system opens the application associated with the protocol.

Refer to the Types of questions and Controlling the flow of questions documentation for more information.

Previewing a campaign

Click the Preview button located in the top-right corner of the page before saving your campaign. This allows you to inspect how employees will see the campaign on their own devices. In the preview, the campaign does not record any answers, choices or comments.

Saving a campaign

Click Save campaign to save any changes without publishing your new campaign. The campaign status turns to Draft, which means that you can return to editing it at a later time. You cannot change the Campaign NQL ID after you save a campaign to support consistent and accurate results when queried via NQL.

Publishing a campaign

Click on the Publish button in the top-right corner of the page to turn a campaign draft into a published campaign. The system sends the published campaign to employees according to the campaign's schedule.

For retired campaigns, click on the Republish button in the top-right corner of the page to reactivate the campaign.

You can publish and republish campaigns if the Manage all campaigns permissions are assigned to your role. Refer to the Roles documentation for more information.

Click on the Republish Button in the top-right corner of the Edit Campaign page.

Republished campaigns reevaluate campaign recipients as defined by the NQL query:

A scheduled one-time campaign does not retarget employees who answered or declined the campaign while it was active.
A scheduled recurring campaign does not retarget employees who answered or declined the campaign within the selected time period while it was active.

Newly created campaigns may take up to 5 minutes to appear on the Campaign overview page.

Retiring a campaign

Click on the Retire button located in the top-right corner of the page to retire a published campaign. Once retired, the system updates the state of campaign responses that are still in a non-final state (planned, targeted) to retired. Campaign responses in the canceled, answered, or declined state remain unchanged.

After retiring, the system removes the campaign from endpoints. Note that if a campaign is displayed on the endpoint at the time of retirement, the system does not forcibly close it, allowing users to finish interacting with it. If a user responds to a campaign already on their endpoint’s screen, the system still records their answers and updates their response state to answered accordingly.

When the campaign is retired, you can adjust its content, including its structure and triggers. Consider the following aspects if your campaign already has responses from employees:

When you add a question, it appears on the campaign dashboard with 0 responses.
When you remove a question, it disappears from the campaign dashboard, the CSV export, and the NQL in the campaign-specific response table. For example, campaign.#nql_id.responses will not include fields starting with answers.question_nql_id anymore.
When you add a choice to a question, it appears on the campaign dashboard with 0 answers.
When you remove a choice to a question, it disappears from the bar chart of the campaign dashboard. Its value remains accessible in the CSV export and from NQL.
When you add or remove parameters, make sure to adjust any workflow or third-party system triggering the parametric campaign accordingly. When you remove a parameter, its value is not available anymore in the campaign-specific response table. For example, campaign.#nql_id.responses will not include the field parameters.parameter_nql_id anymore.
You can freely change the triggers among Manual, Schedule and API. However, you cannot change Remote action trigger to another value to ensure that you retain access to the built-in dashboard.
In case you change a campaign trigger to Schedule, note that the history of requests is taken into account and is not reset. For example, a one-off campaign will not retarget employees that have already answered or declined the campaign, even after republishing it.

A warning message appears if you remove questions or answer choices or if you add or remove parameters.

Data about deleted questions or parameters remains available in the columns answers and parameters of the campaign.responses table, in JSON format, suitable for export purposes.