Run a Campaign well — Humanbased Docs

This page is for a Developer whose Campaign is live or about to launch. It covers the work of running it: testing the reward on a small budget, getting updates in Slack, reading the numbers that show quality and speed, and deciding when to change the price. Building the workflow and passing the launch checks come first; see Test, launch, and manage a Campaign.

Test the reward on a small budget

The right reward is the lowest one that still brings the Contributors you want and work you can accept, at the speed you need. You find it by running a small batch, reading the result, and changing one setting at a time.

Four settings decide what a test batch can cost:

Setting	Where you set it	What it controls
Budget cap (USD)	In the draft, the Pricing & Budget step of Test & Launch	The most the Campaign can spend. Launch reserves the whole amount, and after launch it can only be raised
Reward (per accepted submission)	In Builder, the Cost section of the human step	The base pay for one accepted submission
Items to collect	The same section	How many accepted submissions the step pays for, across all Contributors. It also caps how much work can be claimed
Limit per contributor	The Settings section of the same step	How much one Contributor may submit: Per day, In total, or No limit

A cap can be small. The portal sets no minimum amount; a Campaign whose steps pay a reward only needs a budget above zero. Pricing & Budget also accepts a cap below the projected spend. It then warns that the budget may fund fewer records than projected, and that the Campaign pauses when the budget is exhausted. Billing, budgets, and reconciliation covers how the cap is reserved and raised, and Configure a workflow covers how the places in Items to collect are counted.

The reward you enter is the pay at a reputation factor of 1.0×. A Contributor's quote can scale that reward by the factor of their own tier, from 0.5× to 1.4×. That is why Pricing & Budget shows a projected range and not a single figure. As an illustration, a reward of 0.50 USDC and 100 Items to collect come to between 25 and 70 USD in rewards. Where a platform service fee applies, it is added on top. The tiers and their factors are listed in Understand tiers, eligibility, and pay.

One round of the test looks like this:

Launch with a small Budget cap (USD) and a small Items to collect.
Let the batch reach at least ten review decisions. Below ten, the portal shows the counts and no acceptance rate.
Read the result as described in Read quality and speed.
Change one setting. Adjust the price helps you choose which.
Run the next batch and compare it with the last one.

When a batch gives the quality and speed you need, scale up. Raise Items to collect in Builder, and raise the budget in the Budget & costs section of Setup.

Planned: a royalty product. Humanbased plans to release a royalty product in the first quarter of 2027. It is intended to give Contributors a stronger incentive and to lower the upfront data cost for Developers. It is not available today.

Change the reward while the Campaign runs

The reward belongs to the human step, so you change it in Builder. Open the Campaign and select Open builder. Open the human step and edit Reward (per accepted submission). Save the step, then save the canvas.

On a live or paused Campaign, that canvas save publishes the change as soon as you confirm with Save and apply. There is no test step between your confirmation and Contributors seeing the new reward, so read what the confirmation changes before you save.

For pay, the dividing line is the moment a Task is claimed:

Task	Pay
Claimed after the save	Quoted from the new reward
Already claimed when you save	Keeps the pay quoted at the claim. That quote fixed the reward in force then and the Contributor's tier factor

So what you owe for work already in hand stays as quoted, whichever way you move the reward.

Items to collect and Limit per contributor are settings of the same step. Changing them on a running Campaign goes through the same canvas save.

Get updates in Slack

A connected channel receives this Campaign's events as they happen. Your team learns about a pause, a spent budget, or submissions waiting for review without opening the portal.

Connect a channel

Any member of the Campaign's organization can connect a channel.

Open the Campaign and select Setup, then the Notifications section. It contains the Slack panel.
Select Add to Slack. Slack opens its authorization page.
Choose the channel that should receive the updates, and approve.
Slack returns you to the Campaign. Open Setup and Notifications again. The Slack panel now lists the channel.

If your organization has already connected a channel, the panel also offers Connect an existing channel. It attaches this Campaign to that channel without a new authorization. To stop the updates, select Disconnect on the channel's row.

Choose what arrives

Events come in two groups:

Group	Events
Alerts	Campaign launched, launch reverted, paused, and paused by the system. Budget spending reaching 50%, 80%, and 95% of the budget, spending back under a threshold, and budget exhausted. Submissions waiting for review for more than 24 hours. An appeal opened by a Contributor
Activity	New submission, submission accepted, and submission rejected. Campaign resumed, finished, and archived

A new connection carries both groups and sends each event as it happens. To change that, select Edit on the channel's row. The two checkboxes at the top, alert and activity, switch a whole group on or off. Event types switches single events. Frequency sets each group to As it happens, Hourly summary, or Daily summary. On a busy Campaign, keep Alerts as they happen and move Activity to a summary.

Approve or reject from Slack

A submission that needs a person's decision arrives as a card with Approve and Reject buttons and a View submission link. The buttons work once you have linked your own Slack user to your portal account:

In the Developer portal, open Account from the menu at the bottom left.
In the Slack row, select Connect Slack. The portal shows Your Slack link code.
In Slack, run /link-account followed by that code within 10 minutes.

Approve records the decision. Reject opens a dialog that asks for a reason, and the Contributor sees what you write. The decision is recorded under your portal account. If your Slack user is not linked, or your account is not allowed to decide that submission, Slack tells you privately and the submission stays as it was.

If Slack stays quiet

What you see	What it means	What to do now
Unreachable on the channel's row	The last delivery to that channel failed. The connection may have been revoked in Slack	Select Disconnect, then connect the channel again with Add to Slack
After you select Add to Slack, the panel reads "Slack authorization did not open, so nothing was connected. Allow popups for this site and try again."	The portal could not start the authorization	Try again. If the message returns, write to hello@humanbased.ai with the Campaign ID
After you approve in Slack, the Slack panel still reads "No channel connected. This campaign's updates stay in the portal."	The authorization did not complete. It was declined, no channel was chosen, or more than 10 minutes passed before you approved	Select Add to Slack again, choose a channel, and approve
In Account, the Slack row reads "Locked — create or join an organization to connect a Slack workspace."	Your account belongs to no organization	Create or join an organization, then return to Account
Slack answers "Link your Slack account in the developer portal, then try again."	Your Slack user is not linked to a portal account	Follow the three steps above

Read quality and speed

A Campaign has four views: Overview, Reviews, People, and Setup. These are the numbers worth checking after each batch:

Number	Where it is	What it tells you
Submission acceptance · All decisions	The Output panel of Overview	The share of decided submissions that were approved
Accepted records, shown as "of N records accepted"	The Output panel of Overview	How much finished output the Campaign has produced
Records accepted in the last hours, with the time the rest needs at that rate	The status line above Overview	The current speed
Queued assignments, claimed tasks, and submissions awaiting review	The Workflow panel of Overview	Whether work is waiting for Contributors, in progress, or waiting for your review
Submissions awaiting review, and the longest wait	The Needs your attention panel of Overview	Whether your own reviewing is slowing the Campaign
Per step: total submissions, and how many need review, are approved, rejected, or duplicate	The Task submissions block of Reviews	Which step loses work
Campaign acceptance of one Contributor	The Acceptance history column of Reviews, and the Success column of People	Whether rejections are spread out or concentrated
Typical time, shown as "Typical … · Median"	The Volume & time column of Reviews	The median time from claim to submit at that step. It includes breaks and waiting
Contributors on the roster, and how many have submitted	The line above the roster in People	Whether the people who join go on to work
Available for new work	The Budget & obligations panel of Overview	The budget left after what you already owe. From 80% of the budget spent, a banner at the top of the Campaign states the amount left

Follow the acceptance rate

The rate is approved ÷ (approved + rejected + duplicate). A duplicate counts as a decision, and work awaiting review is left out. With fewer than ten decisions the portal shows Too few to rate in place of a percentage. The Campaigns list repeats the rate on each card, rounded to a whole percent.

The figure covers every decision since launch, so one new batch moves it slowly. To see what a change did, compare batches:

Before you change a setting, open Reviews and note the approved, rejected, and duplicate counts in Task submissions.
After the next batch, read the three counts again.
Subtract the earlier counts from the later ones. The new approvals divided by the new decisions is the rate of that batch alone.

Planned. A Campaign health view with charts of submissions, workflow health, and acceptance rate over time is planned. Until it is available, use the comparison above.

When rejections are high

Find the cause before you change the price:

In Reviews, read Task submissions to find the step with the most rejected or duplicate submissions.
Open several rejected submissions with Review. Review outcome shows the verdict and the recorded reason.
In People, compare the Rejected and Success columns across Contributors.

What you find	What it usually means	What to change
Rejections are spread across many Contributors	The instructions or the form are unclear	Rewrite the brief in the Campaign details section of Setup, or fix the form in Builder. See Define work and participation requirements
Rejections are concentrated in a few Contributors	Those accounts are the problem, and the task itself is sound	A Campaign owner can select Blacklist on that Contributor's row. The Contributor is removed from the Campaign and can no longer join, claim, or submit there. Work they already hold can still be turned in, and Lift ban reverses the decision. You can also cap everyone with Limit per contributor
The reasons point to missing skill or knowledge	The Campaign admits people who are not prepared for the work	Tighten the entry conditions; see Change who can join
The reasons point to rushed or careless work, and the instructions are clear	The reward does not pay for careful work	See Adjust the price

Change who can join

Who does the work depends on the entry conditions. They sit in the Entry Gate step in Builder:

Condition	What it does
Required agreement, required course, and profile conditions	Admit only Contributors who signed, passed, or match. Profile conditions can also be edited in the Requirements section of Setup
Require an invite code to join	Admits only people who present this Campaign's code. You generate the code and share it
Only members of selected teams can join	Admits only members of the Contributor teams you select. Contributor Teams are not open in the production Contributor portal, so with this switch on nobody can join there; see Feature availability

To widen the group, remove or relax a condition. To narrow it, add one. On a running Campaign an Entry Gate change is a canvas save and takes effect at once, and the invite-code actions take effect at once without a save. Configure a workflow describes each condition, and Meet participation requirements shows what a Contributor sees.

Adjust the price

Change the reward after you have ruled out the instructions and the entry conditions. Move it in small steps, so that each batch gives you one clear signal.

When the reward is too low

What you observe	What it usually means	What to change
People lists few Contributors, and the Workflow panel of Overview keeps a high number of queued assignments	Few of the people who qualify find the reward worth joining for	Raise Reward (per accepted submission) by one step. If the entry conditions are stricter than the work needs, relax them
Contributors have joined, yet the line above the roster in People shows few who have submitted	The reward does not cover the time one Task takes	Compare the reward with the typical time in Reviews. Raise the reward, or shorten the form
The work comes from Contributors outside the group you wanted. In People, open the Contributors with the highest Submitted; Standing shows each one's tier and reward multiplier	At this price, the Contributors you wanted pass and others take the work	Raise the reward, or restrict entry with a course, a profile condition, or an invite code
The acceptance rate in Overview falls and the rejected count rises in Task submissions, while the instructions have not changed	Careful Contributors are leaving, or people rush to make the pay worthwhile	Read Review outcome on rejected work first. If it shows rushed work, raise the reward

When the reward is higher than needed

What you observe	What it usually means	What to change
Queued assignments are claimed as soon as they appear, the status line shows the rest finishing sooner than you need, and the acceptance rate holds steady	You are paying more than this work requires	Lower the reward by one step. The new amount applies to Tasks claimed after the save
The budget runs down faster than you planned: budget alerts arrive early, and Available for new work shrinks faster than the accepted count grows	Contributors in higher tiers are doing the work, and an accepted submission pays up to 1.4× the reward	Keep the reward and raise the budget if the quality is worth the price. Otherwise lower the reward
A few Contributors hold most of the Submitted count in People, and the duplicate count rises in Task submissions	The reward is high enough to attract volume over care	Set Limit per contributor to Per day or In total, then lower the reward

For the single records behind these numbers, see Follow submission results. For what the Campaign has spent, see Billing, budgets, and reconciliation.