Marketing campaigns usually follow a repeatable process, but the dates shift for every launch. With Easy Templates for Jira, you can create one campaign template and calculate all task dates automatically from a single Launch Date variable.
This is useful for planning content, design, approvals, ad setup, publishing, and post-launch follow-up — without manually updating every issue.
Example campaign template structure
Example parent issue:
Marketing campaign
Example child issues or subtasks:
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Define campaign brief
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Prepare messaging and copy
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Create design assets
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Review and approve creatives
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Set up email campaign
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Set up paid ads
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Prepare landing page
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Final QA check
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Launch campaign
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Post-launch performance review
How to set it up
1. Create your campaign template
Create a template with the issue structure you want to reuse for each campaign.
For example, add one parent issue and a set of child issues or subtasks for all campaign steps.
2. Add a Launch Date variable
Create a template variable called:
Launch Date
This variable will be filled in when the template is applied and used to calculate dates in all campaign tasks.
Use this syntax to reference it in expressions:
var("Launch Date")
3. Switch date fields to Expression mode
For each task where the date should be calculated automatically:
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Open the field
...menu -
Choose Use expression
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Enter your expression
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Save the template
Example expressions for campaign tasks
Define campaign brief
14 days before launch:
var("Launch Date").minusDays(14)
Prepare messaging and copy
10 days before launch:
var("Launch Date").minusDays(10)
Create design assets
9 days before launch:
var("Launch Date").minusDays(9)
Review and approve creatives
5 days before launch:
var("Launch Date").minusDays(5)
Set up email campaign
4 days before launch:
var("Launch Date").minusDays(4)
Set up paid ads
3 days before launch:
var("Launch Date").minusDays(3)
Prepare landing page
3 days before launch:
var("Launch Date").minusDays(3)
Final QA check
1 day before launch:
var("Launch Date").minusDays(1)
Launch campaign
On the launch date:
var("Launch Date")
Post-launch performance review
7 days after launch:
var("Launch Date").plusDays(7)
Expression syntax used in this example
Reference the variable
var("Launch Date")
Add time
var("Launch Date").plusDays(7)
var("Launch Date").plusWeeks(1)
Subtract time
var("Launch Date").minusDays(14)
var("Launch Date").minusDays(5)
Optional: calculate child tasks from the parent issue
Instead of using the variable in every child issue, you can set a date on the parent issue and calculate child task dates from that field.
Example:
parent.fields("Due Date").minusDays(3)
You can also use the short form:
parent.duedate
This is helpful when child tasks should depend on the main campaign timeline.
Result
With one Launch Date variable, you can generate a complete marketing campaign plan with dates calculated automatically. This makes campaign planning faster, more consistent, and easier to manage across recurring launches.