We recently ran an email campaign and it would have been great to have the conditional wait allow the option to only take an action based on a business day rule, as opposed to a calendar day rule.
Is there a workaround for this using other actions in Journey Orchestrator?
New Idea
Business Day Conditional Wait
I haven't been able to figure out a way to avoid sending emails on weekends or on holidays using Programs feature of Journey Orchestrator.
I was able to set this up for an Onboarding campaign using the basic Outreaches tool by creating a date range in the Powerlist that was being used to filter participants. That way it pulls in contacts over a 3 day period, to account for the scheduled email falling on a Sat or Sun, that user would still show up in the Powerlist on Monday and have the email sent then.
Then in the individual Outreach, I would select the "Every weekday (MON - FRI)" option for scheduling the email. This method allowed us to not send emails on weekends, unfortunately still went out on Holidays as I was not able to figure out how to avoid that scenario.
This is obviously not the easiest or cleanest way to do this, but the only way I was able to configure it with current limitations. This also requires you to create a Powerlist for each email in the chain + an individual Outreach as well. The "Programs" feature requires a lot less work since you only need the one Powerlist and can create the chain of emails in one spot.
I was able to set this up for an Onboarding campaign using the basic Outreaches tool by creating a date range in the Powerlist that was being used to filter participants. That way it pulls in contacts over a 3 day period, to account for the scheduled email falling on a Sat or Sun, that user would still show up in the Powerlist on Monday and have the email sent then.
Then in the individual Outreach, I would select the "Every weekday (MON - FRI)" option for scheduling the email. This method allowed us to not send emails on weekends, unfortunately still went out on Holidays as I was not able to figure out how to avoid that scenario.
This is obviously not the easiest or cleanest way to do this, but the only way I was able to configure it with current limitations. This also requires you to create a Powerlist for each email in the chain + an individual Outreach as well. The "Programs" feature requires a lot less work since you only need the one Powerlist and can create the chain of emails in one spot.
+1+1, this is a must. We currently use the powerlist 3-day method to get around sending on weekends but it still messes with our participant analytics.
Hi,
We have a workaround for this for configuring this within the program using Conditional Wait and Salesforce Formula Fields. Please check this post - https://community.gainsight.com/conversations/how-to-send-emails-in-the-jo-only-on-weekdays-and-skip-weekends-5bf492a4e4b067063e68c304
Thanks
Abhishek S
We have a workaround for this for configuring this within the program using Conditional Wait and Salesforce Formula Fields. Please check this post - https://community.gainsight.com/conversations/how-to-send-emails-in-the-jo-only-on-weekdays-and-skip-weekends-5bf492a4e4b067063e68c304
Thanks
Abhishek S
+1Hi Matt,
Did we answer to your question? Please let us know if you need any help, always welcome.
Did we answer to your question? Please let us know if you need any help, always welcome.
+3Is this a temporary workaround while an in-product solution is actively being investigated? That seems like a lot of work on a per-program basis just to avoid sending on weekends - especially if there are multiple email send steps.
Hi Sam,
Yes, I've seen several workarounds. I agree with Kelly, it would be ideal if we could skip weekends through a productized offering, similar to the logic in playbooks.
Yes, I've seen several workarounds. I agree with Kelly, it would be ideal if we could skip weekends through a productized offering, similar to the logic in playbooks.
+1Any update on if this will be available as a feature? I understand there is a workaround but this requires a lot of work and is not scalable.
+5The workaround also has a limitation due to the way the Conditional Wait processes every 11 hours, which can cause the second email step to send at an unusual time (e.g. early morning). This problem will be compounded if there are several email steps and Conditional Waits using the same workaround.
I’d rather have the ability to skip all weekends when setting up the program to apply across all steps of the Program rather than have to figure out the timing sequence for each send.
+1Thanks for the thread here - is there any way to force the hours to only be between 9 AM and 5 PM local time for the customer when we send? I know that JO polls every 11 hours however we have customers receiving emails in the middle of the night.
Thanks for the thread here - is there any way to force the hours to only be between 9 AM and 5 PM local time for the customer when we send? I know that JO polls every 11 hours however we have customers receiving emails in the middle of the night.
any update on this?
+1Thanks for sharing the usecase.
We have added the ability to configure and use Business hours as a new feature enhancement to conditional wait in JO programs product backlog. This will be prioritised for implementation accordingly.
+7This is a great idea, I cant even count the number of times a customer has requested this of us.
+13Thanks for sharing the usecase.
We have added the ability to configure and use Business hours as a new feature enhancement to conditional wait in JO programs product backlog. This will be prioritised for implementation accordingly.
Great to hear. What’s the timeline?
If I may add, we need to be able to configure weekends for different locations too (i.e. the Middle East) and not just have the Western weekend considered:
- Thursday/Friday
- Friday/Saturday
- Saturday/Sunday
Are the options required, and ideally, it needs to look at country data to decide when to send.
The most expensive part of building is the mistakes. That's true in construction. Not so much in CSOps. So ask questions, make mistakes and learn. All views expressed here are my own.
+2Let me check with Pavan and share back here if we have more idea on the timeline.
It's an opportunity for engagement
+1The general idea is to leave the allowed days configurable to the admin at a program level. This would allow the admin to set any day of a week as off day(s).
For the initial implementation, the applicable timezone would be as configured by the admin. This is still high on priority in planning.
+13The general idea is to leave the allowed days configurable to the admin at a program level. This would allow the admin to set any day of a week as off day(s).
Awesome, that’s perfect to enable true globalization/localization capabilities.
+1This is very high in priority on the JO roadmap, let us please have some upvotes on the topic to definitely bump it up further in priority.
+2We desperately need this! Upvoted and shared
+2Idea merged into:
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