Link experiments in Optimizely Program Management

  • Updated
  • Optimizely Web Experimentation
  • Optimizely Performance Edge
  • Optimizely Personalization
  • Optimizely Feature Experimentation
  • Optimizely Full Stack (Legacy)
On September 23, 2025, Optimizely is sunsetting the legacy Program Management tool as part of our continued investment in the Collaboration platform for experimentation users. If your team is using Program Management and needs a copy of your data, contact your Customer Success Manager.

Optimizely Program Management enables teams to collaborate on experiment ideas. At a certain point during the execution of an idea, your team will build it as an actual experiment in Optimizely Experimentation and link it back to the original idea.

By linking experiments, you create a searchable record of experiments in Program Management that is visible to the entire team. Linked experiments also feed into program-level reporting so that you can monitor program velocity, win rates, and more.

Prerequisites to linking an experiment

To link an experiment to an idea in Optimizely, first create either a: 

In a project that the team has access to in Program Management.

Before linking an experiment, you need to check your Team Settings to ensure the project where your experiment lives are connected to your Team. See FAQs to learn more.

Link an Optimizely Feature Experimentation experiment

  1. In Program Management, navigate to your team.

  2. Find the idea to which you want to link. Click the idea name to open the idea.

    fs-ideas.png

  3. In the left sidebar, navigate to Experiments.

    fs-experiments.png

  4. Select Link Experiment. 

  5. Search for the experiment by experiment name, key, description, or Optimizely Experiment ID and select it. When searching by rule name, you will receive all the flag environment's experiments.

    experiment-fs.png

  6. Click Link.

Link an Optimizely Web Experimentation or Full Stack (Legacy) experiment

Linking an Optimizely Web Experimentation experiment is similar to linking a Full Stack (Legacy) experiment. The only difference is how the experiments appear in the search results.

  1. In Program Management, navigate to your team.

  2. Find the idea to which you want to link. Click the idea name to open the idea.

    Ideas.png

  3. In the left sidebar, navigate to Experiments.

    experiments.png

  4. Select Link Experiment.

    link-experiment.png

  5. Search for the experiment by experiment name, key, description or Optimizely Experiment ID and select it.

    add-experiment.png

  6. Click Link.

Program management syncs with your Optimizely Experimentation projects once per hour. You may experience a delay of up to one hour before new experiments are available to link and experiment updates appear in program management.

Record results

In program management, you can manually annotate the results for each variation in a linked experiment:

  • Not analyzed

  • Won

  • Lost

  • Inconclusive

Use it to take notes on your results analysis and observations from segmentation for a historical program reference. These results also contribute to the Reported Win Rate module on your Program Reporting page. (A separate Inferred Win Rate is also pulled automatically.)

To record experiment results:

record_and_analysis.png

  1. Navigate to Idea Details > Experiments.

  2. Select View Results.

  3. In the top navigation bar, click Record Results & Analysis.

  4. Add experiment results, document experiment learnings in the Analysis field, and add the implementation date.

Optimizely Personalization automatically saves your notes as you make them.

View linked experiments

In program management, the Experiments tab lets you view, sort, and filter a team's linked experiments. Search and filter based on status, stage, sites and apps, touchpoints, tags, scores, teammates, test schedule, and more.

To search, select Experiments from the team dashboard:

experiments-tab.png

 

FAQs

What do I do if my experiment or personalization campaign does not appear in search results?

  • Check that the project the experiment or campaign lives in is mapped to this team. Optimizely Personalization queries all projects that are included in the team. Navigate to Team Settings to view the projects included in the team.

  • Check that the experiment has not been archived; archived experiments do not display in this list. If you want to link an archived experiment, unarchive it and search again. It may take up to an hour for the experiment to display. Refer to manage experiments and campaigns in Optimizely Web Experimentation for more information on archived experiments.

I cannot link a listed experiment or campaign.

Check the following if you cannot link a specific experiment or campaign:

  • Make sure it is not already linked to a different idea. You can only link an experiment or campaign to a single idea. Optimizely Personalization uses experiment starts and results to produce program-level reporting. Optimizely only allows linking to a single idea to ensure that program reporting does not overrepresent velocity and win rates.

  • You have the right permissions to link experiments.