Home
User Guide
With Unica Plan, you organize the people, tasks, and budget for marketing programs, while you reduce costs and time to market.
Workflows
To help you complete different workflow-related efforts, the Workflow tab offers different view modes and an edit mode.
Workflows - Classic version
The classic version of workflows is the existing version to view and modify workflows.
Editing workflow spreadsheets
When you create a project, a wizard that is based on the template you selected collects information. After you complete the wizard pages, you can customize the default workflow that is provided by the project template.
Workflow task status
Each new workflow task has a status of Pending. As project managers and participants work on tasks, they update the status to indicate the current progress.
Skipping an approval task
You can skip an approval process from a task on the Workflow tab.

User Guide
With Unica Plan, you organize the people, tasks, and budget for marketing programs, while you reduce costs and time to market.
- Introduction
  Unica Plan is a tool for enterprise planning, collaboration, and workflow that provides a complete solution for the needs of marketers. You can use Unica Plan to get a comprehensive and holistic view of all marketing projects across your company.
- Common tasks
- Plans
  Plans capture the objectives of a business unit or geographic area for a specific timeframe, such as a year or a quarter. A plan is the container for your marketing programs and projects.
- Programs
  Programs are the child-objects of Plans. Programs can contain multiple projects to organize work for your organization.
- Projects
  A project organizes all the information that is related to develop and run one or more related marketing initiatives. Projects contain general information, resources, and attachments for the marketing initiative. Projects also typically organize the people who work on the marketing initiative, including who completes which tasks, and the timeline to complete the tasks. Projects can also include budget information. Monitoring features ensure that everyone knows whether the project is completed on time.
- Workflows
  To help you complete different workflow-related efforts, the Workflow tab offers different view modes and an edit mode.
  - Workflows - Enhanced version
    The enhanced version of workflows is the new version of workflows, added in 12.1 release of Unica Plan, to view and modify workflows.
  - Workflows - Classic version
    The classic version of workflows is the existing version to view and modify workflows.
    - Workflow views
      To monitor and update workflow in an ongoing project, project participants typically use the three view modes to work with the spreadsheet tab. Project managers also use the edit mode to set up the workflow for new projects. In edit mode, project managers can add stages, tasks, and approval tasks to projects that are in progress.
    - Spreadsheet view mode
      When you display the Workflow tab in spreadsheet view (the default), information about the stages and tasks in your workflow display in tabular format.
    - Timeline view mode
      When you view the workflow on a timeline, you can update the task status and scheduling information and add attachments.
    - Process flowchart view
      The process flowchart view displays the tasks in a network diagram style.
    - Workflow concepts
      Workflows organize the tasks, approval tasks, stages, and milestones for each project. Workflows measure the time that is spent on each part of the project and the people who are assigned to work on it.
    - Editing workflow spreadsheets
      When you create a project, a wizard that is based on the template you selected collects information. After you complete the wizard pages, you can customize the default workflow that is provided by the project template.
      - Edit mode toolbar
        When you switch from a view mode to edit mode, you can change the workflow. You click the icons on the toolbar to add, move, and delete stages and tasks.
      - Adding a stage or task
        To add a task or stage to a workflow, you must have the appropriate permission for the related template.
      - Workflow spreadsheet columns
        When the workflow displays in spreadsheet view mode (the default view) or in edit mode, data is presented in a spreadsheet of columns and rows. You review and enter information in the spreadsheet cells for each column.
      - Workflow task status
        Each new workflow task has a status of Pending. As project managers and participants work on tasks, they update the status to indicate the current progress.
        Completing multiple tasks
        If you are assigned tasks for one or more projects, you can set them to complete at the same time.
        Skipping multiple tasks
        You can skip tasks when you are assigned tasks for one or more projects.
        Skipping an approval task
        You can skip an approval process from a task on the Workflow tab.
    - Importing workflow templates into projects
      You can import a previously saved workflow template into a new project instance.
    - Printing the Workflow tab
      You can either print all information found on your project Workflow tab, or select certain columns of information to print.
- Approvals
  An approval process streamlines the process of having your work reviewed and approved. Multiple users can review work in parallel or in an order that represents your business processes.
- People and teams
  In Unica Plan, you assign work to teams or individual users.
- Calendar
  Historically, organizations produced paper-based calendars and updated them with the latest information. The calendar feature provides marketing groups with electronic means to view and update calendar data.
- Grids
  A grid is a spreadsheet-like presentation of data. Grids allow Unica Plan users to store all campaign- and project-related data within the project.
- Marketing objects
  A marketing object is any work product a team develops and reuses in the course of its marketing activities. Marketing objects can represent physical items (such as a letter or banner ad) or a business component (such as a credit card offer, a target segment definition, or a rewards program definition).
- Assets and asset libraries
  Unica Plan provides centralized management, secure storage, and web-based access for digital assets.
- Budgets
  In Unica Plan, a budget coordinates expenses of plans, programs, and projects. After you establish the plan budget, you can fund linked programs, and ultimately projects, from it. Unica Plan tracks budgets of child programs and projects in the form of allocations, forecasted or committed spending, and actual expenses.
- Invoices
  In Unica Plan, you can view all changes that were made to an invoice, including the time and date of the changes and the type of changes made.
- Accounts
  A top-level Unica Plan account represents a corporate account that is established by a finance department for tracking and controlling expenditures and cash flows for specific areas of the business. Accounts can have subaccounts.
- Metrics
  Metrics are used for management reports and analysis. View metrics on the Tracking tab for plans, programs, and projects.
- Reports
  By default, Unica Plan provides a set of predefined reports and dashboard components. The Unica Plan reports package provides additional example reports and dashboard report components that are created in IBM® Cognos®, a separate business intelligence application.
- Searches
  You can perform simple and advanced searches in Unica Plan.
- Alerts and the message board
  You can use alerts and the message board both to communicate information to other users of Unica Plan. Alerts and the message board are available for plans, programs, projects, requests, assets, accounts, approvals, invoices, tasks, teams, and marketing objects.
- Reading a message on the message board
  You can read messages that were previously posted to the message board, if you have permission to view that object. Messages can be posted for plans, programs, projects, assets, accounts, approvals, or invoices.
- Checklists and To-dos
  Checklists are independent of other features of Plan and you can use checklists to maintain lists of to-dos for yourself or any other user.

Skipping an approval task

You can skip an approval process from a task on the Workflow tab.

About this task

Note: You cannot skip form tasks in the workflow.

Procedure

Go to the Workflow tab of the project that contains the approval to skip.
Click the name of the approval task to skip.
The Approval dialog appears.
Click Status > Cancel Review.
Close the dialog.

Results

The approval task is crossed out and can no longer be accessed. If necessary, you can also delete the approval.

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.