How to add all participants to a holiday storyline, and how to complete storylines after X months.

A client had some questions about Storylines and Development provided some good info. We've edited it accordingly.

Q: What’s the best or most efficient way to send a single holiday message to all participants at once, considering that Storylines normally schedule messages based on each person’s individual start date?
 

A: Under the storyline config, click "Expand" next to Advanced Configuration, and select Date Based. Enter any start date in the past.  (it's irrelevant unless you want to use the same template over and over)
 
This will force the same start date for all participants in the storyline, and allow you to schedule by calendar date.

Q: Each participant remains active in the study for nine months, and we want to make sure their Storyline messages automatically stop once that period ends. Is there a way to set this up, such as an automated expiration or scheduled deactivation, instead of doing it manually?

A: First, create a new survey called something like "9-Month Complete Action".  That survey will have one question, and one or more actions that will complete any storylines you have.  Set the question content to "%blank%", and the question type to "Terminating". This will NOT send a text to the participant. But it will run the actions to stop all storylines.  Here is a screenshot of what it should look like:

Now add another storyline, called the "9-Month Complete" storyline. It will contain one item, which runs around day 280 and starts the "9-Month Complete Action" survey you just created.  Enroll all participants into this storyline with their original start date, and 9 months later they will be opted out of any storylines.
 
Added tip, in the Advanced Config, you can mark a storyline as Required under workflow options, and this storyline will be pre-checked on the "Add Contact" page.  You can have multiple storylines like this, so participants are enrolled into everything you need as you add them.