ℹ️ Info
Part of the Getting Started guide, Step 5. Run your first campaign.
Campaigns are how you run phishing simulations across your organization. A campaign targets the right people, uses simulations you pick or let revel8 choose, and delivers them on a schedule you define. This guide covers creating, starting, managing, and analyzing campaigns.
1. Create a campaign
Open Content → Campaigns and click Add (on an empty list, click Create campaign). The wizard has four steps: Details, Simulations, Schedule, and Summary.
1.1 Details
Enter a Name for the campaign.
Choose the Target audience:
Entire organization: every active employee is eligible.
Specific employee groups: pick one or more groups (departments, teams, or risk groups).
Contact center: run voice-phishing simulations against a contact center. This option appears only if the Contact Center module is enabled, and it adds an extra Distribution step later in the wizard.
📝 Note
Only employees with an Active status receive simulations. Inactive employees are excluded but stay in the system for historical reporting.
1.2 Simulations
Choose how simulations are selected:
Automatic: revel8's AI picks the most relevant simulations based on your context settings.
Select: choose simulations manually from the library. The grid shows each simulation's Name, Type, Difficulty, and Scope; use the filters to narrow it, and check the ones to include. You can run a Test execution on any row to preview it.
1.3 Schedule
Set when simulations go out. Choose an Availability type:
Interval: a date range. Delivery follows the business hours set under Settings → Business hours.
Daily business hours: tailor delivery to specific weekdays and time windows. Set the weekdays, the start and end dates, and the daily time interval, then click Generate schedules. revel8 creates a schedule for each matching day, which you can adjust or remove.
Contact center campaigns get an extra Distribution step to pace calls: Random (spread across the window) or Minimum distance (a minimum gap between simulations, a maximum per day, and a time zone).
1.4 Summary
The Review & Confirm step shows the full configuration. If it's correct, click Create campaign.
⚠️ Warning
Creating a campaign does not start it. It's configured but idle until you schedule it (see below).
1.5 Start the campaign
A new campaign first shows Scheduling while revel8 configures it (a few seconds to a few minutes, depending on the number of people). When it's ready, the status changes to Ready to Start.
To start it, click the three-dots menu on the campaign row and choose Schedule. The status moves to Scheduled, and to Running once the first simulations deploy in your time windows.
📝 Note
If a campaign is Ready to Start but its status distribution is empty, no simulations matched your settings and audience. Delete it and create a new one.
2. Manage your campaigns
The Campaigns list is your overview. Columns include Name, Status, Start date, End date, Target audience, Simulations, Status distribution, and Groups. Use the column toggle to show or hide columns, and the Status filter to focus the list.
2.1 Campaign statuses
Status | What it means |
Scheduling | revel8 is configuring the campaign after creation. This usually takes seconds to minutes. |
Scheduling Failed | Configuration hit an error. Delete the campaign and create a new one. |
Ready to Start | Fully configured. Start it with Schedule in the three-dots menu. |
Scheduled | Planned and queued, not yet deploying. |
Running | Actively deploying simulations within the configured windows. |
Stopped | Paused before its window ended. Restart it with Reschedule. |
Finished | The delivery window has ended. |
The Status distribution column breaks down the states of the individual simulations within a campaign.
2.2 Row actions
Open the three-dots menu on a campaign row. Which actions show depends on the status:
Edit: available while a campaign is Ready to Start or Scheduling Failed.
Schedule: start a Ready to Start campaign.
Stop: pause a Scheduled or Running campaign.
Reschedule: restart a Stopped campaign.
Analyse: available for any campaign.
To delete campaigns, select them with the row checkboxes and click Delete in the toolbar. A running campaign can't be edited; stop it first.
3. Analyze a campaign
Choose Analyse from the three-dots menu (or select several campaigns and analyse them together) to open the analytics view:
KPIs: your Awareness score and simulation count, plus rates for interactions, incidents, ignored simulations, and training completion.
Simulation run states distribution: the final state of simulations, such as safely reported versus active incidents.
Schedule Overview: a bar chart of simulation volume across campaign dates.
Event distribution: a funnel of employee actions, from simulation started through mail opened, attachment clicked, and training completed.
Contact center campaigns also show a Call log section.