How-To: Leverage Plan Statuses in your workflow
Overview
Plan statuses in Media Planner help manage collaboration, approvals, and access throughout the lifecycle of a plan. Whether you're building a new campaign or reviewing final budgets, using statuses effectively ensures the right people are involved at the right time — with the right level of control.
User Roles and Plan Statuses
There are four plan statuses: Draft, In Review, Locked, and Closed. Each status works hand-in-hand with user roles — Owner, User, and Client — to govern what actions can be taken and by whom.
User roles are defined at the client level: https://help.alliplatform.com/central-settings/Working-version/how-to-add-a-user-to-a-client-change-access-levels
Role | Who It’s For |
|---|---|
Owner | These individuals have full access to all plans and have final approval for plan changes. |
User | These individuals have access to contribute to plans but don’t have final approval. |
Client | These individuals have limited access to view only finalized plans. |
Plan statuses are defined on the settings page for a plan and visible on the planner page.
Status | Purpose | Visibility |
|---|---|---|
Draft | Default status when a plan is created. Use this while building or editing. | Owner + Users |
In Review | Use when the plan is ready for internal or stakeholder review. | Owner + Users + Client |
Locked | Set when a plan is approved and ready for execution. | Owner + Users + Client |
Closed | Use to archive plans that are complete and should not be changed. | Owner + Users + Client |
Instructions
When a plan is first created, its automatically set to Draft. In this state, both Owners and Users can add or edit rows on the plan.
Once you're ready for internal or stakeholder feedback, change the status to In Review. This locks editing for Users and grants visibility to Clients. Owners still maintain full control to edit the plan.
When a plan is approved and finalized, mark it as Locked. This prevents accidental edits and signals it’s ready for execution. Owners still maintain full control to edit the plan.
Users can propose changes by creating plan versions — even in Locked or Closed statuses. However, only Owners can promote a version to the primary, ensuring structured governance and clear approval for in-flight changes. Clients can only see primary versions of a plan.
Once a plan’s media has ended, move the plan to Closed. This archives the plan while preserving visibility for reporting.
