Config strategies

Last updated 10/03/2026

An operation strategy is a specific config instance or a combination of instances, such as "Consecutive login reward config" and "Cumulative payment reward config". AE Config Center supports the following strategy capabilities:

• Deliver configs by target environment (for example, to specific game servers or app versions)
• Deliver configs to specific audiences (for example, deliver campaign configs to the "High-value player cohort")
• A/B testing (planned)
• Priority control (planned)
• Conditional values (planned)

Create a strategy

Click New Strategy in the upper-right corner of the page and select an Enabled template under the current config item to create a strategy.

tip

Before you create a strategy, make sure that:

• The config item is bound to an Enabled channel
• The template is enabled and has been verified with Send Test

Creating a strategy involves three parts:

1. Set up targeting
2. Configure the strategy content
3. Configure release settings

Targeting

Targeting consists of selecting the Target Environment and the Audience.

Audience

Configure the target audience of the strategy.

• All Users

If you want to release the config to all users, skip this step.

• Custom Audience

You can use AE user behavior data to select users who meet specific conditions and deliver configs to them. Example scenarios:

• Offer high-value gift packs to players who have a paying habit but have not paid recently
• Send item compensation emails to players who participated in the xxx campaign

After you confirm the audience conditions, you can estimate the audience size to see how many users the strategy covers.

Note

To keep data definitions consistent, custom audience conditions can only use tags and cohorts whose calculation timezone is the same as the strategy timezone (which you can set in the upper-right corner of the strategy creation page), and only tags and cohorts that use users (#user_id) as the entity are supported.

Target Environment

If you need to deliver configs to users in specific environments, set target environment conditions. Example scenarios:

• Deliver beginner campaign configs to recently opened servers
• Deliver English in-app messages to users whose app system language is English

The available target environment parameters depend on the config retrieval channel.

• If you fetch configs via Webhook, add parameters that your downstream service can process to the environment parameters of the Webhook channel in Config Center. For details, see Config Center Channel Settings.

• If you fetch configs via the client SDK, you can set environment conditions with the parameters that the SDK automatically carries when it requests configs. For parameter details, see Config Center Channel Settings.

Note

If you deliver user-level configs via Webhook, AE pushes the #user_id of the users who meet the conditions and the values of the channel custom parameters to the downstream server. To ensure a smooth integration, make sure that you add an ID field that the downstream service can parse to the channel as a custom parameter.

Strategy content

You can flexibly define the strategy content based on the selected template.

Release settings

In release settings, you can specify the online and offline times of the strategy. How these times take effect depends on the integration method:

Fetch via Webhook

• Online time: The time when AE Engage starts delivering the config to the downstream. For example, for a National Day campaign config, you can deliver the config to downstream servers at the end of September.
• Offline time: The time when the strategy stops taking effect. For example, a New Year's Day campaign is set to end at 00:00 on January 4.

Note

The offline time of a Webhook strategy only marks the effective period of the strategy. By default, AE Engage does not send an offline instruction to the downstream. If you need this, contact your administrator to configure it.

Fetch via client SDK

• Online time: From this time on, devices can fetch the strategy.
• Offline time: From this time on, devices can no longer fetch the strategy.

In addition, if your business logic controls when strategies are displayed, you can specify the Strategy Display Time (that is, the scheduled start time), which is when the strategy is actually displayed to players. After you specify it, the strategy management list and the Strategy Schedule page show the strategy schedule based on the display time.

Note

The strategy display time is only used to display the strategy schedule and is not delivered to devices with the config.

Save the strategy

After you complete the settings above, you can save your strategy. When it is saved, a unique ID, the Strategy ID, is generated for the strategy. The strategy ID is used to manage the entire lifecycle of the strategy, including taking it online, suspending it, changing it, and taking it offline.

Strategy status

The following shows how the status of a strategy changes during management.

In addition to the main strategy statuses, the following two special statuses may occur depending on the implementation method:

• Webhook: Releasing, Failed (statuses that may occur while AE delivers the config)

• Client: Registering, Failed (statuses that may occur while AE prepares data assets so that devices can fetch the config in real time)

The following table lists the actions supported in each strategy status. All actions except editing support batch processing.

Status	Save and submit	Approval	Edit	Online	Suspend	Offline	Copy	Delete
Draft	√		√				√
Approving		√					√
Rejected			√				√	√
Registering							√
Failed (registration)			√				√	√
Pending				√			√
Releasing							√
Failed (release)			√	√			√	√
Online			√ (generates a new version)		√	√	√
Paused			√ (generates a new version)			√	√
Offline							√	√

Strategy management

The following example of launching a "cumulative top-up campaign" shows how to manage a strategy.

A game designer wants to prepare a cumulative top-up reward campaign for New Year's Day:

• Release the strategy to the game server at 8:00 on December 31 (online)
• After the campaign goes online, the designer finds that the campaign copy is not appealing enough and wants to modify it directly (edit and release a new version)
• After the campaign goes online, the designer finds that the quantity of a reward item is misconfigured and wants to suspend the strategy's interaction with players first, then update it and take it online again (suspend)
• After the campaign goes online, the designer finds that it is not performing well and wants to take it offline and replace it with another campaign (offline)

These scenarios correspond to the Online, Edit, Pause, and Offline actions of a strategy.

Take a strategy online online

You can take a strategy online at a specified time or manually.

If you choose webhook integration, you receive a config delivery message whose opType is online.

If you choose client SDK integration, end users who match the targeting can pull the config content after the strategy goes online.

Edit and take online again online

After a strategy goes online, you can edit it directly. Editing generates a new version of the strategy. After the new version is approved, you need to take it online manually (strategies with a scheduled recurring release can only go online on schedule). The old version stays in effect until the new version goes online.

If you choose webhook integration, you receive a config delivery message whose opType is online, with the latest strategy content.

If you choose client SDK integration, end users who match the targeting can pull the latest config after the new version goes online.

Suspend suspend

After a strategy goes online, you can suspend it if you want it to stop taking effect for a while. After it is suspended, you can edit the strategy. Editing a suspended strategy also generates a new version, which can go online again after approval.

If you choose webhook integration, you receive a strategy suspension message whose opType is suspend.

If you choose client SDK integration, end users can no longer pull the config after the strategy is suspended.

Take a strategy offline manually offline

If you want to take a strategy offline before the specified offline time, you can take it offline manually. After a strategy goes offline, it cannot go online again.

If you choose webhook integration, you receive a strategy offline message whose opType is offline.

If you choose client SDK integration, end users can no longer pull the config after the strategy goes offline.

tip

All times above are in the strategy timezone (which you can set in the upper-right corner of the strategy creation page).

tip

All of the above actions are based on the Strategy ID. To reduce the risk of strategy control, V4.4 only allows the Engage Admin to suspend strategies and take them offline manually.

Send Test

Before a strategy officially goes online, you can run a Send Test first and then save and submit it for release once the test passes. You can use a test strategy to test the online, suspend, and offline effects to make sure that the entire strategy lifecycle management flow works. The send test process is the same as that of templates. For details, see Template send test.

Permissions

V4.4 only supports role-based authorization. The permissions for config strategies are as follows:

Permission	Details	Engage Admin	Data Engineer	Engage
View	View the config strategy list and strategy configuration details	√	√	√
Edit	Create, copy, submit/withdraw approval, edit, manually go online, delete, Send Test	√		√
Manage	Suspend, manually take strategies offline	√
	Manage config strategies created by others	√