Coworker for Marketo Engage: How to Configure Organizational Rules

Prerequisites: Unlocking Coworker in Your Instance

If you open Marketo Engage today and cannot find the Coworker tile on your My Marketo home screen, it is not broken – it is simply gated by commercial and contractual requirements.

Step 1: Sign the Gen-AI Addendum

To activate Coworker, your organization must agree to Adobe’s Core Gen-AI Terms and Supplemental Terms.

• Reach out to your Adobe Account Manager / Customer Success Manager (CSM) or raise an Adobe Support ticket to initiate the paperwork.
• Not sure who your Adobe CSM is or hitting a wall with permissions? Contact Andy Mullings and the team at JTF, and we can help point you to the right contacts.

Step 2: Configure Roles & Permissions

Once enabled on your subscription, access is governed at the role level in Admin > Users & Roles:

• By default, the permission is enabled for Admin and Adobe Product Admin roles.
• For campaign operations team members, assign them to the dedicated Coworker for Marketo Engage User role or edit an existing custom role to check Access Coworker for Marketo Engage.

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Where to Find Organizational Rules

Once permissions are set, navigating to the rules setup can be surprisingly easy to miss.

1. From the My Marketo dashboard, click the Coworker for Marketo Engage tile.
2. Click the Gear icon (Settings).
3. Look toward the top right: locate the Organizational Rules button. (Note: It has subtle styling and doesn’t look like a standard call-to-action button, but clicking it opens the rule editor).

[My Marketo] ➔ [Coworker for Marketo Engage] ➔ [Settings / Gear Icon] ➔ [Organizational Rules (Top Right)]

Rules are formatted using Markdown with YAML frontmatter. You can configure Global Rules that apply across your entire instance, as well as specific Workspace Rules if regional teams or business units require different naming or compliance logic.

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What Needs to Go Into Your Organizational Rules?

Organizational Rules are essentially the prompt engineering and governance framework for Coworker. Without them, Coworker will use generic naming patterns, omit mandatory tokens, or default to arbitrary send settings.

When configuring your rules, focus on six primary governance pillars:

Pillar	What to Define	Why It Matters
Naming Conventions	Patterns, abbreviations, and accepted code options for Programs, Smart Campaigns, Emails, and Lists.	Prevents broken reporting feeds, attribution errors, and clutter in the asset tree.
Program Structures & Folders	Default local folder hierarchies inside cloned programs (e.g., 01 Assets, 02 Smart Campaigns, 03 Reports).	Keeps cloned program architecture identical across all operators.
Standard Program Tokens	Mandatory local tokens required across campaign types (e.g., {{my.EventDate}}, {{my.WebinarURL}}, {{my.SpeakerName}}).	Eliminates human error during cloning and ensures placeholder copy populates dynamically.
Sender & Compliance Standards	Approved From Names, From Email Addresses, and Reply-To addresses. Mandatory inclusion of unsubscribe links and CTA rules.	Protects sender reputation, ensures deliverability, and maintains legal email compliance.
Recommended Elements & QA	Enforced Alt Text on all imagery, plain-text email versions, and structured UTM parameters on tracked links.	Ensures email accessibility and clean analytics tracking in web reporting platforms.
Audience Exclusion Filters	Standard suppression rules (e.g., unsubscribes, competitors, internal test domains, hard bounces).	Prevents embarrassing campaign sends to competitors or unmarketable leads.

Pro-Tip: If your rule set becomes bloated or corrupted during testing, use the Reset to Default option in the settings editor to return to Adobe’s baseline syntax before reapplying your custom code.

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How to Accelerate Your Setup

Writing YAML frontmatter and Markdown definitions for every asset type from scratch can be daunting.

A faster, practical workflow:

1. Export or copy Adobe’s default template directly from the Organizational Rules panel.
2. Feed your existing documentation into an LLM: Take screenshots or documentation of your current naming conventions, folder taxonomy, and program templates, and prompt the LLM to structure your rules into the required YAML/Markdown schema.
3. Validate before committing: Paste the output back into your Sandbox instance and test Coworker against a sample program clone before rolling it out to production.

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What Coworker Can (and Can’t) Do Once Activated

Once your Organizational Rules are locked in, what does day-to-day execution look like?

• Clone & Build Programs: Coworker guides you through selecting a base template from the tree and choosing a destination folder. It handles the duplication in the background, allowing you to context-shift to other tasks rather than watching a loading wheel.

• Validate Programs (Automated QA): Coworker evaluates your created programs against your Organizational Rules – checking for missing tokens, broken naming formats, or absent compliance links before launch.

• Investigate Leads: You can query specific records by email address to pull activity histories, data values, and recommended next best actions directly within the conversation window.

Where You Still Need Human Oversight

Coworker is a powerful assistant, not an autonomous MOps replacement. It duplicates assets, creates placeholder smart campaigns, and aligns naming. However:

• Smart Campaign filters and flow steps require manual verification. Always inspect smart list logic, triggers, and wait steps before activation.
• Session history does not persist indefinitely. If you navigate away during an active Coworker workflow, prompt context can reset.

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The Strategic Perspective: Tech vs. Process

Deploying agentic AI inside Marketo Engage is not simply a matter of switching on a toggle. AI amplifies the operational environment it inherits. If your naming conventions are unstandardized, your folder hierarchies messy, and your data hygiene undefined, an AI assistant will automate that disorder at ten times the speed.

Getting real value out of Coworker requires treating your configuration as an ongoing operational strategy – aligning your core data infrastructure, governance, and campaign architecture.

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Connect with Andy.

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Frequently Asked Questions