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 - 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.
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.
Schedules
There are two options for scheduling in workflows: baseline and up-to-date.
Keeping an up-to-date schedule
System administrators set up permissions and reminders for schedules. Schedule owners set the dates for each task in the schedule. Team members update the progress for their tasks.

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.
    - 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.
      - Schedules
        There are two options for scheduling in workflows: baseline and up-to-date.
        Using a baseline schedule
        System administrators set up permissions and reminders for baseline schedules. Schedule owners set the dates for each task in the baseline schedule. Team members update the progress for their tasks in the baseline schedule.
        Keeping an up-to-date schedule
        System administrators set up permissions and reminders for schedules. Schedule owners set the dates for each task in the schedule. Team members update the progress for their tasks.
      - Date dependency calculations
        When you enter or change the date for a task, the system calculates other dates that are based on your entry. It uses an internal algorithm to bidirectionally recalculate dates, starting with the cell where you entered the date.
      - Scheduling work time
        You can use Unica Plan to help you manage and allocate your resources effectively.
    - Editing workflows
      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.
    - Importing workflow templates into projects
      You can import a previously saved workflow template into a new project instance.
    - Saving projects as workflow templates
      You can save the data of the Workflow tab as a separate workflow template component and reuse the workflow in other project templates.
  - Workflows - Classic version
    The classic version of workflows is the existing version to view and modify workflows.
- 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.

Keeping an up-to-date schedule

System administrators set up permissions and reminders for schedules. Schedule owners set the dates for each task in the schedule. Team members update the progress for their tasks.

Before you begin

Before you create your projects, have your system administrator set up permissions and reminders as follows.

Set permissions so that only project owners can update Target dates.
Set reminders (Alerts) that are based on the Target dates.
Set reminders to be sent only to the owner or owners.
Optionally, set reminders on the Actual/Forecast dates to be sent to team members.

About this task

While you work with an up-to-date schedule, team members perform the following high-level steps.

Procedure

The owner sets the initial Target Start and End dates for each task.
As the project progresses, team members update the Actual/Forecast dates with real data.
If a task is delayed (the owner receives reminders that are based on Target dates), the owner assesses the situation and adjusts the Target dates and durations as necessary.

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.