Schedule
Starts the automation on a recurring schedule—nightly, hourly, on the first of the month. Reach for it when the work is driven by the clock rather than by an event: a maintenance sweep, a digest, a periodic sync.
Fields
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Payload | Optional structured input delivered with every run. A schedule has no person at fire time, so the data is filled in here at configuration time. Choose Content Type—an existing content type, plus the specific Content to deliver—or Custom JSON, where you write the object yourself in Payload (JSON). Leave unset for no input. A Custom JSON object with a top-level _trigger field shows a warning: that name is where the trigger puts its own data, and its entries are written over any of the same name inside it. |
| Schedule | When the automation runs. Choose Schedule Builder to assemble the recurrence from Second, Minute, Hour, Day, and Month pickers, or Cron Expression to type a cron string directly. Either way the form shows the schedule back to you in plain English. |
| Time Zone | The zone the times in the schedule are read in. Set it to the zone the automation serves—5:00 PM means 5:00 PM there, whatever clock the server keeps. Leave it unset and the schedule is read in the server's own zone, which on most deployments is UTC. The note under the field always names the zone in use and the next run in it. |
What later steps see
With a payload set, the trigger's output is that payload's fields. Beside them, inside the trigger's own Trigger object (_trigger in the payload), every run carries a Schedule object describing the firing that started it:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Scheduled For | The tick this run was meant for. Window over this rather than Fired At—a run that fires late still covers the period it was scheduled to, and a run windowing on the moment it happened to start would drop or double-count whatever fell in the gap. |
| Fired At | When the trigger actually fired for that tick. |
| Previous Scheduled For | The tick before Scheduled For, for "everything since the last tick" windows. Empty when the schedule has none. |
| Next Scheduled For | The tick after Scheduled For. Empty when the schedule never comes round again. |
| Late By | How long after Scheduled For the trigger fired, in milliseconds. Zero for an on-time fire. |
The moments are ISO-8601 timestamps in the schedule's own Time Zone, so a log line reads in the clock you wrote the schedule against, and a condition or a Sleep can still compare or wait on them. The picker offers them as Trigger › Schedule › Scheduled For and so on. With no payload set, the Trigger object is the whole output.
Running one by hand
A Schedule trigger can be run at any time without waiting for its next occurrence—the node offers Run Automation and Run as Dry Run, the same as an On Demand trigger. The run carries the payload configured on the trigger, exactly as a scheduled run does, so a schedule can be tested without temporarily rewriting it to fire sooner. Its Schedule object reads as an on-time firing at the moment you started it—Scheduled For and Fired At are that moment and Late By is zero—with the real previous and next ticks around it, so every field a later step references still holds a value.
Starting a run this way leaves the schedule alone: the next scheduled run still happens at its usual time. Run history tells the two apart—a run started by hand is labeled with the name of the person who started it, and a scheduled run is labeled with its schedule.
The run buttons appear only on a trigger that is the start of the flow, and only while the automation is enabled.
Daylight saving
A schedule with a time zone follows the wall clock in that zone, so a 5:00 PM run stays at 5:00 PM on both sides of a daylight saving change rather than drifting by an hour. The two transition days need care because one of them has an hour that happens twice and the other has an hour that never happens:
- On the day the clocks go back, the repeated hour runs the schedule once, not twice. A 1:30 AM run happens on the first pass through 1:30 AM and is not repeated when the clock returns to it.
- On the day the clocks go forward, an occurrence inside the skipped hour does not run that day. A 2:30 AM run is missed on a day where 2:30 AM does not exist, and resumes the next day. Move the time outside the transition hour if the run cannot be missed.
Due schedules are checked about once a minute. A schedule set to fire more often than that may skip occurrences, and the form warns you when the expression you have written does so.