Home
Administrator Guide
With Unica Plan, you organize the people, tasks, and budget for marketing programs, while you reduce costs and time to market.
Program and project templates
Program and project templates have additional tabs that customize the object instances that are made from the template.
Project template Workflow tab
The Workflow tab identifies and organizes tasks for a project. When you create a template, you can include data on its Workflow tab to provide an initial workflow structure for each marketing object instance that users create. To review and define a workflow on the template, you use a spreadsheet-style interface. Users access a similar spreadsheet interface to update the supplied workflow as needed for individual instances.
Configuring the approval process
In Unica Plan, a structured approval process distributes information to team members and elicits their comments.
You can set the approve with changes options from the configuration properties.

Administrator Guide
With Unica Plan, you organize the people, tasks, and budget for marketing programs, while you reduce costs and time to market.
- Overview
  With Unica Plan, you organize the people, tasks, and budget for marketing programs, while you reduce costs and time to market.
- Plan interface customization options
  Unica Plan offers options for customizing the user interface. You can customize or rebrand the Unica Plan interface to match your organization's needs.
- Unica Plan integrations
  Unica Plan offers integration with Unica Campaign, Unica Centralized Offer Management, and Unica Journey. Integration with Unica Centralized Offer Management is only used for migrating offer management capability from Unical Plan to Unica Centralized Offer Management.
- Marketing object types
  Marketing objects are the work products that a team develops and reuses in the course of marketing activities. In addition to a set of standard marketing object types that is supplied with Unica Plan, you can create custom marketing object types.
- Project and request deactivation
  After your organization uses Unica Plan for some time, the user interface can become cluttered with out-dated or unwanted projects and requests. You can deactivate projects and requests to reduce clutter and simplify searches.
- Plan reports
  Unica Plan provides a set of default reports and dashboard report components. The Unica Plan reports package provides extra reports and dashboard report components, which are created in IBM® Cognos®, a separate business intelligence application.
- Template Basics
  A template for a marketing object type, such as a plan, program, or project, defines the information that your organization wants to capture about the object. Then, you use templates to create object instances. If you have the Financial Management module installed, an invoice template defines the information that your organization wants to capture in invoices.
- Adding or editing templates
  After you identify the template components that you need, you can create the template. You need to build components before assembling them in the template.
- Program and project templates
  Program and project templates have additional tabs that customize the object instances that are made from the template.
  - About customizing the Budget tab
    To customize the Line Items Details tables on the Budget tab for programs and projects, you can add up to three text columns. This change is global; the text columns you specify appear for all Line Items Details tables in all programs and projects in Unica Plan. Changes to the Budget tab apply to both new and existing programs and projects.
  - Template Budget Approval Rules tab for automating line-item approvals
    You can write approval rules on the Budget Approval Rules tab of program, project, and invoice templates to streamline the approval process. Using the rule builder, you can define rules that automatically approve budget and invoice line items.
  - Project template Project Roles tab for including participants
    Use this tab to specify the project roles of the people who participate in the projects and project requests that are created from this template.
  - Project template Request tab for configuring the request process
    Users who do not have permission to create instances from the template can submit a request to create an instance. Then, the request must be approved. Use this tab to determine who receives requests and how requests are processed.
  - Project template Workflow tab
    The Workflow tab identifies and organizes tasks for a project. When you create a template, you can include data on its Workflow tab to provide an initial workflow structure for each marketing object instance that users create. To review and define a workflow on the template, you use a spreadsheet-style interface. Users access a similar spreadsheet interface to update the supplied workflow as needed for individual instances.
    - Workflow template tab
      On the Workflow template tab, you can edit, import, and save workflow template spreadsheets.
    - Adding workflow to templates
      To set up a project template that includes workflow data, you create the template, specify team member roles, and then edit the Workflow tab.
    - Configuring the workflow
      Click Edit... to configure the workflow. Then, use the toolbar to add and delete stages and tasks. You can also move stages and tasks, manage dependencies, and access other options. After you configure the workflow, you can save it as a workflow template. You can reuse a workflow template in another project template as-is or import and edit it.
    - Fields in workflow spreadsheets
      When you configure the workflow, you add a row to the spreadsheet for each task. Then, you edit the cells in that row to capture information for the task.
    - You can save a project workflow as a template to use in other projects. You can export the template from the project and import it into another project. If the workflow template contains some flowchart approval and you cannot import it in an non Campaign project.
    - Configuring the approval process
      In Unica Plan, a structured approval process distributes information to team members and elicits their comments.
      - You can set the approve with changes options from the configuration properties.
      - Setting approval deny reasons
        To require a deny reason when users deny an approval, you set a configuration property and add options to the Approval Deny Reason list.
      - Selecting approval options for templates
        If your organization requires users to specify a predefined reason when they deny an approval, you identify the set of reasons in the template. You can set different reasons for denying approvals in each project template.
    - Customize milestone types
      Unica Plan offers a set of default milestone types for use in project workflows. Users can select an option from the milestone type list when a workflow spreadsheet is in edit mode. You can also customize the milestone types.
  - Creating and editing workflow templates
    The workflow that you create on the Workflow tab of any project template or instance can be saved as a workflow template. Then, you can reuse the workflow in similar projects.
  - Many similar projects might require small variations in workflow. You can configure project templates to use different workflows that are based on user input instead of creating separate templates. Use this feature to simplify your organization's template collection.
  - You can configure the project template to use a different workflow that is based on template attributes. For example, you can configure the template to use a different workflow based on what selection the user makes in the form attribute channel: phone, direct mail, or email. Understandably, the tasks for a project might change dramatically based on these options.
  - You can import a previously saved workflow template into a new project instance.
  - Importing workflow templates
    You can import an existing workflow template into your project template. Then, you can customize the workflow template for your new project template.
  - Exporting workflow templates
    You can export individual workflow templates to use in other project templates. In some cases, you might want to edit the exported XML file and reimport the workflow template into Unica Plan.
  - Project template Campaign tab for communicating with Campaign
    Use this tab to configure communication from Unica Plan to Unica Campaign if integration is enabled.
  - Data Mapping Definitions
    The Data Mapping Definitions page maps data between campaign projects in Unica Plan and campaigns in Unica Campaign. Use the Data Mapping link on the Template Configuration page to configure data mapping.
- About forms
  A form is a collection of attribute fields that gather information about an object.
- About attributes
  An attribute defines a piece of information that you want to gather from a user. For example, the information can be text, integers, dates, or a choice from a predefined list. In Unica Plan, you define attributes to collect these different types of information, and then place them on forms. Then, you can add or more forms to templates as tabs. When users create items, they select a template. Each attribute that is included in the template corresponds to a field or other user interface control on the tabs that collect information.
- About metrics
  Metrics measure the performance of an object and are always numeric. Typical metrics include financial metrics, such as cost and revenue, and performance metrics, such as the number of contacts and the number of responses in a particular marketing campaign.
- Multiple locale support
  For organizations with Unica Plan users in multiple locales, you can translate the labels and text strings in the user interface for each locale.
- About security
  You configure security policies that grant users permission to access specific objects and features through assigned access roles.
- Setting up alerts
  Alerts are notifications of important changes that users need to know about, or reminders about actions that they need to take.
- About list definitions
  The user interface of Unica Plan presents several list box controls that you can configure to provide a customized set of options.
- Implementing project health rules
  To help project owners and participants track the overall status of their projects, you configure the system to calculate project health.
- Exporting and importing metadata
  You can transfer data structures (metadata) between Unica Plan systems using the export and import features.
- Setting up libraries for digital assets
  Through the optional Digital Asset Management module, Unica Plan provides centralized management, secure storage, and web-based access for digital assets.
- Setting up accounts
  An account in Unica Plan represents a specific corporate General Ledger (GL) account that is established by a finance department to track and control expenditures and cash flows. Accounts are a feature of the optional Financial Management module.
- About advanced topics
  This chapter provides information about advanced customization options for the Unica Plan interface.
- Unica Plan Rest API
  The Unica Plan REST API is a façade that provides a client view of a running Unica Plan instance.

Setting Approve with Changes options

You can set the approve with changes options from the configuration properties.

About this task

The Allow approvers to approve with changes option is applicable to all approvals tasks in project templates, projects, and stand-alone approvals.

Procedure

To set or edit the approve with changes options, complete the following steps:

Go to Settings > Configuration > Plan > umoConfiguration > Approvals.
To allow users to approve a task with changes, set approveWithChanges to True.
The Allow approvers to approve with changes option is now selected by default in the Approval form.
To allow users to edit the Allow approvers to approve with changes option when they create an approval, set overrideApproveWithChanges to True.
Restart the Unica Plan web application.

Have feedback?
Google Analytics is used to store comments and ratings. To provide a comment or rating for a topic, click Accept All Cookies or Allow All in Cookie Preferences in the footer of this page.