Setting Up a Schedule Trigger

Configure your workflow to run automatically on a recurring schedule.

Overview

A schedule trigger runs your workflow automatically on a recurring cadence: every few minutes, hourly, daily, weekly, or any pattern you can express with a cron expression. There is no caller involved; the workflow engine fires the workflow itself when the next scheduled time is reached.

Use a schedule trigger for anything that needs to happen on a clock: nightly data sync, hourly health check, weekly digest, monthly billing roll-up. The trigger is timezone-aware so the schedule fires at the correct local time in your chosen timezone.

Before You Start

• The workflow must be enabled for the schedule to run. A disabled workflow stays dormant regardless of the cron expression.
• Decide on the timezone before configuring. Switching it later shifts every future fire time.

Configuration

1. Click the Trigger node on your canvas.
2. Set the trigger type to Schedule.
3. Enter a standard 5-field cron expression in the Schedule field.
4. Choose the timezone the schedule should be interpreted in.
5. Save the workflow, then make sure it is enabled.

Common Schedules

• Every hour - 0 * * * *
• Daily at midnight - 0 0 * * *
• Every weekday at 9am - 0 9 * * 1-5
• Every Monday at 8am - 0 8 * * 1
• First day of each month - 0 0 1 * *

Settings

• Cron expression - Standard 5-field cron (minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week).
• Timezone - IANA timezone name (for example Europe/London, America/New_York). Defaults to the workspace timezone.

Tips

• Test your cron expression with a third-party cron parser before saving. A misplaced field is easy to make and impossible to spot in the raw string.
• Pin to off-peak times for heavy workflows. Running at :00 on the hour bunches load; spreading to :13 or :37 reduces contention.
• For sub-minute frequencies, use a different pattern (for example a webhook from an external scheduler). Cron's resolution is per minute.
• Pair the schedule trigger with a Condition node early in the workflow if you only want some runs to do work (for example, skip weekends).

Common Pitfalls

• Workflow disabled - The most common reason a schedule appears to do nothing. Check the enabled toggle on the workflow.
• Wrong timezone - A schedule set for 09:00 in UTC fires at different local times depending on daylight saving. Always pick an explicit IANA timezone.
• Overlapping runs - If a previous execution is still running when the next scheduled time arrives, the new run starts anyway. Add concurrency guards if overlap would cause data corruption.
• Cron syntax - Day-of-week and day-of-month interact in non-obvious ways when both are non-wildcard. Stick to a single dimension at a time.

Related Articles

• Setting Up a Manual Trigger
• Setting Up a Webhook Trigger
• Setting Up an Email Trigger
• Enabling and Disabling Workflows
• Monitoring Workflow Executions

Learn More

• Trigger node documentation