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How to Schedule Workflows to Run Automatically

Scheduled workflows run automatically at times you define, like every hour, every morning at 9 AM, or on specific days of the week. You configure the schedule in your app settings, and the platform's cron system spawns the workflow at each scheduled time without any manual trigger.

How Scheduled Workflows Work

The platform runs a schedule checker every minute. It reads your app configuration, matches the current time against your defined schedule patterns, and spawns the workflow when a match occurs. This happens entirely on the server, so your workflows run whether you are logged in or not.

Scheduled workflows are ideal for recurring tasks that need to happen reliably at specific times: daily report generation, hourly data syncs, weekly cleanup routines, or periodic health checks on external systems.

Schedule Timing Options

Run Every Hour

Set the hour to a wildcard and specify the minute. For example, a schedule set to run at minute 00 every hour executes at 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, and so on, 24 times per day. This is good for data sync operations that need frequent updates.

Run at a Specific Time Daily

Set both the hour and minute to specific values. A schedule set to 9:00 runs once per day at 9:00 AM Eastern. This is the most common pattern for daily reports, morning summaries, and end-of-day processing.

Run During Business Hours Only

Set the hour to a range like 8 through 19 to run only during business hours. Combined with a specific minute, this gives you hourly execution between 8 AM and 7 PM while staying silent overnight. Great for monitoring tasks that only matter when your team is working.

Run on Specific Days

Combine the time settings with day-of-week controls to run only on weekdays, only on weekends, or on specific days. A weekly report might run only on Mondays at 8:00 AM, while a weekend inventory check runs Saturdays at 6:00 AM.

Step-by-Step Setup

Step 1: Create the workflow you want to schedule.
Build and test your workflow in the Chain Commands visual builder first. Make sure it runs correctly when triggered manually before adding a schedule. A scheduled workflow that fails silently is worse than no automation at all.

Step 2: Open the schedule configuration for your app.
In your admin panel, go to the app settings where schedule options are configured. The schedule is defined in the app configuration and controls when the cron system triggers your workflow.

Step 3: Set the time pattern.
Configure the hour and minute for your schedule. Use a specific hour like 9 for once-daily runs, a range like 8 through 17 for business-hours runs, or a wildcard for every-hour runs. The minute should be a zero-padded number like 00, 15, or 30.

Step 4: Enable the schedule.
Turn on the schedule status in your settings. The platform checks this flag before spawning scheduled jobs, so you can configure a schedule and leave it disabled until you are ready to go live. This is your on/off switch.

Step 5: Monitor the first few runs.
After enabling, watch the first few scheduled executions to confirm they trigger at the right times and complete successfully. Check your usage logs and any output the workflow produces. Once you are confident it works reliably, you can stop monitoring and let it run unattended.

Time zone note: All schedule times are in Eastern Standard Time (EST). If your business operates in a different time zone, adjust the hour accordingly. A 9 AM Pacific schedule would be configured as 12 (noon) Eastern.

Common Scheduling Patterns

Daily Morning Report

Schedule at 7:00 AM. The workflow queries yesterday's sales data, formats a summary, and sends it via email to the team before they start work. By the time anyone opens their inbox, the report is already there.

Hourly Website Health Check

Schedule every hour at minute 00. The workflow pings your website URL, checks the response code, and sends an SMS alert if the site is down. See How to Automate Website Monitoring and Alerts for a detailed walkthrough of this pattern.

Weekly Data Cleanup

Schedule on Sundays at 2:00 AM. The workflow scans for stale records, archives old conversations, and removes temporary data. Running during off-hours ensures no impact on daytime operations.

Business-Hours Social Posting

Schedule every hour from 9 AM to 5 PM on weekdays. The workflow pulls the next queued post from your content calendar and publishes it. See How to Automate Social Media Content Creation for the full setup.

Scheduled Workflows vs Event-Triggered Workflows

Scheduled workflows run at fixed times regardless of what is happening in your business. Event-triggered workflows run when something specific happens, like a form submission or webhook. Many automations combine both: a webhook-triggered workflow captures incoming data and queues it, while a scheduled workflow processes the queue in batches at regular intervals. This pattern gives you real-time capture with controlled, paced processing.

Set up automations that run on their own schedule. Let the platform handle the timing.

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