Recurring Campaigns allow organizations to automate outreach to evolving patient populations, supporting a “set it and forget it” message delivery workflow to patient cohorts. Examples of common use cases for Recurring Campaigns include:

• Sending a scheduling flow to patients who are newly due for a particular type of screening

• Sending instructions to patients who received a colorectal screening kit

• Sending follow-up instructions and education to patients who have been discharged from the Emergency Department in the last 24 hours. 

What is Required to Support Recurring Campaigns?

Patients to be contacted (identified by patient IDs or MRNs) are queried in your EMR or your organization’s population health tool vendor, exported into a .CSV file, and dropped into a shared SFTP folder for patient outreach. At a set cadence, Artera Harmony Federal Edition (AHFE) automatically checks the file path for new patient lists and sends the Recurring Campaign to those patients. To use Recurring Campaigns, your Enterprise must have an SFTP integrated with AHFE. 

For information on how to configure a shared SFTP folder, please connect with your AHFE Representative.

How Recurring Campaigns Work

Users will create a Recurring Campaign in Artera. Once a name is entered for the Recurring Campaign, an External ID will auto-generate. This External ID must be used as the name of the subfolder within the SFTP site. 
NOTE: It is essential that the subfolder name exactly matches the External ID as any Patient List .CSV files placed in subfolders with incorrect names will not be processed by AHFE.

Once the Recurring Campaign is created in AHFE, the EMR or vendor will send patient list .CSV files directly to the shared SFTP site subfolder. AHFE polls the SFTP site at a pre-determined cadence. If a new .CSV file is detected, a Campaign is created and messages are sent to patients included in the patient list.

Key Decisions

Review Existing Campaigns

If your organization is currently using Campaigns, you may want to automate existing daily, weekly, or monthly Campaigns that you send. For example, you may have scheduled Campaigns for seasonal reminders, like flu vaccines. 

Your AHFE Project Manager will work with you to review these existing Campaigns and make recommendations on what to disable so there are no overlapping Campaigns before initiating a new Recurring Campaign to avoid duplicates. 

Recurring Campaigns Workflows

Your AHFE Project Manager will work with you to determine which Practice(s) and line(s) should be used to send Recurring Campaigns to patients. 

How to Configure Recurring Campaigns

Once your SFTP folder(s) have been configured by AHFE, create a Recurring Campaign:

1. In the Navigation Bar, select Campaigns > Recurring Campaigns
2. Select Create Recurring Campaign in the upper-right corner of the screen
3. Enter the Recurring Campaign Details:
   1. Recurring Campaign Name: This name is not patient-facing and serves as the Recurring Campaign’s title.
   2. Practice: Select the Practice associated with this Recurring Campaign.
   3. Line: Select the line to associate with this Recurring Campaign.
   4. Category: Select a Recurring Campaign category that best matches the Recurring Campaign’s purpose.
4. The Audience section is auto-completed by AHFE. It indicates the “Audience Source” for the Recurring Campaign (where the Recurring Campaign will pull your patient lists from) and includes the Recurring Campaign’s External ID.
5. Create your call Campaign Message and choose to add a Spanish translation. You can choose to craft a message or use a Quick Response.
6. Next, determine when the Recurring Campaign should be triggered. NOTE: Recurring Campaigns will begin firing automatically when an audience file (patient list) is added to your SFTP folder, so long as the Recurring Campaign is set to "on" and the Recurring Campaign’s scheduling criteria is met.
   1. Send only between the hours of: Depending on the volume and cadence of calls you are looking to send, a Campaign may send over several days. Use these delivery time slots to indicate which hours of the day to trigger the Campaign calls. For Campaigns where you want patients to engage with you (e.g. call back to schedule a visit), ensure the volume of responses is manageable for your team. For example, if you have a staggered start and your full staff is only on shift from 10:00 AM-3:00 PM, consider setting delivery times based on staff availability. 
      
   2. Send on business days only: Use this checkbox to indicate whether this Recurring Campaign should only be sent on Business Days. Business Days are determined by the Practice and line hours. Any day that the Practice or line is open for any duration of time counts as a Business Day in AHFE. 
      NOTE: If a Recurring Campaign’s call asks that the patient engage back with staff, we recommend enabling this setting. This ensures that someone will be available to respond to the patient quickly.
   3. Sent from:Select the Practice line.
7. Once all the required information has been entered, select Create Recurring Campaign in the upper-right corner of the screen:

Recurring Campaigns Details Page

Once the Recurring Campaign is created, review the details of the Recurring Campaign.This provides users with the opportunity to modify a Recurring Campaign prior to turning it on.
                    

The following information is available on the Recurring Campaign Details page:

1. Recurring Campaign Name and Status: In the top-left corner of the page is the name of the Campaign along with its current status, which is either “on” or “off.”

2. Message: This displays a preview of the call message that will be made to patients when the Campaign runs. This also indicates whether the call message was translated into Spanish.

3. Audience: This provides the details of the audience (patients) who will be sent this message. 

4. Sending History: This will show the last five Campaigns that were created and triggered through this Recurring Campaign.

5. Schedule: This displays the information pertaining to the start date and time of the Recurring Campaign, which will always be the date and time that an audience file is added to the Recurring Campaign’s SFTP folder. It also includes the Recurring Campaign’s daily start and end times, Business Days only selection, and how many messages will be sent per hour. 

6. Details: This displays the line associated with the Campaign, the category associated with the Campaign, and the Practice for which the Campaign was created.

From the Recurring Campaign's detail page, you can choose to start the Recurring Campaign, if it is currently off, by selecting Start Campaign. You can also use the Actions (...) menu to edit the Recurring Campaign.

Recurring Campaigns Status

If a Recurring Campaign’s status is set to off, the Recurring Campaign will create a Campaign when a new patient list .CSV file is added to the SFTP, but the Campaign will be in a pending status. This status is helpful for testing or troubleshooting. AHFE will not make the call to patients until an AHFE user manually sets an individual Campaign to "start." The user can go about this in two ways: by navigating to the Campaigns Overview page (from the navigation bar, select Campaigns > Campaigns), locating the Campaign, and starting it or by selecting the Campaign from the Recurring Campaign's Details page, which will route the user to the Campaign to start it.

If a user turns the Recurring Campaign status to "on," Campaigns created when a new patient list .CSV file is added to the SFTP will automatically be queued and sent during configured sending hours. Files added to the SFTP while the Recurring Campaign was "off" will still be pending until a user manually "starts" them. 

FAQs

Which User Types can create Recurring Campaigns?

Staff, Manager, and Enterprise Users can create Recurring Campaigns in AHFE.

Can the name of a Recurring Campaign be modified once it begins running?

No, once a Recurring Campaign is running, its name cannot be changed. Therefore, during its configuration, it is important to ensure the name given to the Recurring Campaign is appropriate.

Is there a Recurring Campaigns File Extract template?

Similar to Campaigns, you will need to provide a .CSV file with the list of patient MRNs in a single column with no headers or additional text. This file will need to be sent to the SFTP site subfolder that corresponds with the Recurring Campaign’s External ID.