# Campaigns
Campaigns in PAI serve as an organizational layer that allows you to group related projects and track them against a centralized budget. This feature is particularly valuable for agencies and production companies managing complex client engagements that span multiple deliverables or phases.
![[campaign-dashboard.png]]
*The Campaigns dashboard showing multiple projects grouped under campaign umbrellas.*
## Campaign Purpose and Benefits
- **Unified Budget Management**: Track multiple projects against a single overarching budget allocation
- **Client-Centric Organization**: Group all projects related to a specific client initiative
- **Streamlined Oversight**: Gain visibility into the financial performance across interconnected projects
- **Simplified Reporting**: Generate comprehensive reports covering all projects within a campaign
- **Coordinated Resources**: Manage shared team members and vendors across multiple projects
> [!tip] When to use campaigns
> Campaigns are ideal for managing multi-deliverable client initiatives where several related projects contribute to a single overall goal, such as advertising campaigns with multiple video assets, multi-platform content rollouts, or phased production projects.
## Creating and Managing Campaigns
### Campaign Creation
To create a new campaign in PAI:
1. **Navigate to Campaigns**: Access the Campaigns section from the main navigation menu
2. **Initiate Creation**: Click the "+ New Campaign" button
3. **Required Information**:
- **Campaign Name**: Enter a descriptive name for the campaign
- **Client Assignment**: Select the client associated with this campaign
- **Date Range**: Define the campaign's start and end dates
- **Budget Allocation**: Enter the total available budget for the campaign
- **Reference Number**: Optionally add a custom reference number (useful for aligning with client reference numbers or project management systems)
### Campaign Settings and Configuration
After creating a campaign, you can configure additional settings in the Campaign Overview:
- **Budget Management**: Update the total campaign budget as needed
- **Timeline Adjustment**: Modify the campaign's start and end dates
- **Reference Updates**: Change the reference number or add additional identifiers
- **Description**: Add or edit campaign descriptions and objectives
## Project Association
### Adding Projects to Campaigns
You can associate projects with a campaign in two ways:
1. **Creating Projects Within Campaigns**:
- Navigate to the Campaign Dashboard or the Projects tab within a campaign
- Create a new project directly within the campaign
- The project automatically lives under the campaign banner and inherits the campaign's client
2. **Adding Existing Projects**:
- Navigate to the Campaign Dashboard or the Campaign Projects tab
- Click "Add Projects" to view eligible projects
- Select projects to add to the campaign
- Note: Only projects associated with the campaign's client will be available for selection
> [!warning] Client restriction
> Projects can only be added to campaigns associated with the same client. This ensures that all projects within a campaign maintain consistent client attribution.
### Project-Campaign Relationship
Important aspects of the project-campaign relationship:
- **Client Restriction**: Projects can only be added to campaigns associated with the same client
- **Financial Tracking**: Each project's approved external cost contributes to the campaign's total spend
- **Budget Monitoring**: PAI automatically tracks campaign budget utilization as projects are approved
- **Project Independence**: Projects maintain their individual settings and workflows while contributing to campaign metrics
## Campaign Calendar
The Campaign Calendar provides a consolidated view of all events across projects within the campaign:
- **Aggregated View**: Displays events from all associated campaign projects in a single calendar
- **Similar Interface**: Functions like other calendar views in PAI, with familiar navigation and interaction
- **Comprehensive Timeline**: Shows production days, post-production days, deliverable deadlines, and custom events from all projects
- **Visual Coordination**: Easily identify scheduling conflicts or overlaps across multiple projects
- **Centralized Planning**: View the complete campaign schedule without switching between individual projects
## Contact Management in Campaigns
### Campaign-Level Contacts
- **Adding Contacts**: Assign contacts directly to a campaign from the Campaign Contacts tab
- **Contact Inheritance**: When new projects are created within a campaign or assigned to a campaign, they automatically inherit the campaign's contacts
- **Independence from Projects**: Campaigns do not automatically inherit contacts from existing projects that are added to the campaign
- **Strategic Benefit**: This one-way inheritance ensures consistent stakeholder involvement across all campaign projects
## Campaign Financial Tracking
### Financial Tracking
- **Spend Tracking**: PAI aggregates the total approved external costs from all associated projects
- **Important**: Only projects with "Approved" status contribute to the campaign spend
- Projects in other statuses (New, Sent, Cancelled, etc.) do not affect the campaign budget utilization
- **Budget Visualization**: View graphical representations of budget utilization and remaining funds
- **Project Contribution Analysis**: See how each project contributes to the overall campaign spend
- **Automatic Aggregation**: Campaign financial data automatically updates when project estimates are approved
## Removing Projects from Campaigns
When you need to disassociate a project from a campaign:
- **Navigate to**: The Campaign Projects tab or Project Overview
- **Remove Project**: Select the option to remove the project from the campaign
![[campaign-remove-project.png]]
- **Project Status**: The removed project becomes a stand-alone project unassociated with any campaign
- **Contact Management**: Note that user assignments are not automatically adjusted
- After removing a project from a campaign, you'll need to manually modify any user assignments as needed
## Related Topics
- [[Budgets|Budgets]]
- [[Project Calendar|Project Calendar]]
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