When you create a flowchart to generate proposed contacts for optimization, you must include a data manipulation process such as the Select or Extract process, and an Optimize process. The data manipulation process passes the proposed contacts to the Optimize process. When you configure the Optimize process, you specify which Optimize session will receive those contacts.

You can have more than one data manipulation process feeding contacts to an Optimize process. All contacts passed from a data manipulation process make up a cell. For example, if you have two Select processes in your flowchart connected to a single Optimize process, the contacts from Select1 form one cell, and those from Select2 form another.

In addition, each Optimize process forms a unique package. A package is an important concept for Optimize, since it represents a single interruption. All offers presented to a recipient within a single "package" (Optimize process) are counted as a single interruption for contact fatigue purposes, that is, when specifying a Max # of Packages rule in Optimize. By definition, all communications in a single package occur at the same time—on the same contact date—and via the same channel. If you need to send communications on different dates or using different channels, you must use more than one Optimize process. From the above example, contacts from both Select1 and Select2 form the same package since they are all within the same Optimize process.

You can have more than one Optimize process in your flowchart. With multiple Optimize processes you can send the same contacts to multiple Optimize sessions—for example, if you have one optimization session per channel or offer type—or use one flowchart to generate multiple packages.