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Scheduled tasks are only for recurring tasks. If you want to trigger a one-off task at a future time, you should use the delay option.

Defining a scheduled task

This task will run when any of the attached schedules trigger. They have a predefined payload with some useful properties:
You can see from the comments that the payload has several useful properties:
  • timestamp - the time the task was scheduled to run, as a UTC date.
  • lastTimestamp - the time the task was last run, as a UTC date.
  • timezone - the timezone the schedule was registered with, defaults to “UTC”. In IANA format, e.g. “America/New_York”.
  • scheduleId - the id of the schedule that triggered the task
  • externalId - the external id you (optionally) provided when creating the schedule
  • upcoming - the next 5 times the task is scheduled to run
This task will NOT get triggered on a schedule until you attach a schedule to it. Read on for how to do that.
Like all tasks they don’t have timeouts, they should be placed inside a /trigger folder, and you can configure them. You can set a TTL on a scheduled task to automatically expire runs that aren’t dequeued in time. This is useful when a schedule fires while the previous run is still executing - rather than queueing up stale runs, they’ll expire:

How to attach a schedule

Now that we’ve defined a scheduled task, we need to define when it will actually run. To do this we need to attach one or more schedules. There are two ways of doing this:
  • Declarative: defined on your schedules.task. They sync when you run the dev command or deploy.
  • Imperative: created from the dashboard or by using the imperative SDK functions like schedules.create().
A scheduled task can have multiple schedules attached to it, including a declarative schedule and/or many imperative schedules.

Declarative schedules

These sync when you run the dev or deploy commands. To create them you add the cron property to your schedules.task(). This property is optional and is only used if you want to add a declarative schedule to your task:
If you use a string it will be in UTC. Alternatively, you can specify a timezone like this:
When you run the dev or deploy commands, declarative schedules will be synced. If you add, delete or edit the cron property it will be updated when you run these commands. You can view your synced schedules in the dashboard: open the task on the Tasks page and check its “Schedules” tab.

Imperative schedules

Alternatively you can explicitly attach schedules to a schedules.task. You can do this in the dashboard from the scheduled task’s page by pressing the “Create schedule” button, or you can use the SDK to create schedules. The advantage of imperative schedules is that they can be created dynamically, for example, you could create a schedule for each user in your database. They can also be activated, disabled, edited, and deleted without deploying new code by using the SDK or dashboard. To use imperative schedules you need to do two things:
  1. Define a task in your code using schedules.task().
  2. Attach 1+ schedules to the task either using the dashboard or the SDK.

Spreading runs with windows

By default a schedule runs at its exact cron time. When many schedules share the same cron pattern, such as a daily 0 9 * * *, they all fire at the same time and load your downstream systems as well as ours. A window spreads those runs out: each schedule is assigned a stable time within the window after its cron time, so the load is smoothed while each schedule keeps firing at a predictable, repeatable moment. The assigned time is deterministic. A given schedule always lands at the same offset for a given interval, so runs don’t jump around between occurrences. And you can always see exactly when the next run will start. Set a window as either:
  • An absolute duration in whole minutes or hours, up to 24 hours: "30m", "2h", "24h". Absolute windows are capped at the next cron time, so a run is never delayed past its following occurrence.
  • A percentage of the interval between runs: "30%", "100%". A "50%" window on an hourly schedule spreads runs across the first 30 minutes of each hour.
Set "0m" (or "0%") for no spreading — the run fires at its exact cron time. Declarative schedules set the window on the cron object:
Imperative schedules set it when creating or updating a schedule, either in the dashboard form or through the SDK:
The payload timestamp and upcoming values are always the nominal cron times, not the assigned times. When you retrieve a schedule, nextRun is the nominal cron time and nextRunEffectiveAt is the assigned time the run will actually start.

Supported cron syntax

“L” means the last. In the “day of week” field, 1L means the last Monday of the month. In the “day of month” field, L means the last day of the month. We do not support seconds in the cron syntax.

When schedules won’t trigger

There are two situations when a scheduled task won’t trigger:
  • For Dev environments scheduled tasks will only trigger if you’re running the dev CLI.
  • For Staging/Production environments scheduled tasks will only trigger if the task is in the current deployment (latest version). We won’t trigger tasks from previous deployments.

Attaching schedules in the dashboard

You need to attach a schedule to a task before it will run on a schedule. You can attach imperative schedules in the dashboard:
The Schedules page has moved. There is no longer a standalone “Schedules” page in the sidebar. Schedules now live on the Tasks page: open a scheduled task to create, view, edit, enable/disable, and delete its schedules. The old /schedules URL redirects to the Tasks page.The scheduled task must already exist first — define it in your code with schedules.task() and sync it to the environment by running the dev or deploy command so it appears on the Tasks page. A project with no tasks yet will only show the deploy onboarding.
1

Open the scheduled task

In the sidebar select the “Tasks” page, then select the scheduled task you want to attach a schedule to (scheduled tasks have a clock icon, and you can filter the list to Scheduled).Scheduled task page
2

Create your schedule

Press the “Create schedule” button, fill in the form, and press “Create schedule” when you’re done. Create schedule formThese are the options when creating a schedule:

Managing schedules in the dashboard

Open the scheduled task and switch to the “Schedules” tab to see every schedule attached to it — both declarative and imperative — with its type, cron pattern, external id, next and last run, and status. Click a schedule to open the inspector, where you can enable/disable, edit, or delete imperative schedules without deploying new code. Declarative schedules are managed in your code, so they can’t be edited or deleted from here.

Attaching schedules with the SDK

You call schedules.create() to create a schedule from your code. Here’s the simplest possible example:
The task id must be a task that you defined using schedules.task().
You can create many schedules with the same task, cron, and externalId but only one with the same deduplicationKey.
The deduplication key is per project, not per environment. Using the same key in Production and Staging creates a single schedule; the last create/update decides which environment it appears in. For fixed schedules, prefer declarative (cron on the task). If using imperative across environments, use a different deduplication key per environment (e.g. include the env name in the key).
This means you can have thousands of schedules attached to a single task, but only one schedule per deduplicationKey. Here’s an example with all the options:
See the SDK reference for full details.

Dynamic schedules (or multi-tenant schedules)

By using the externalId you can have schedules for your users. This is useful for things like reminders, where you want to have a schedule for each user. A reminder task:
/trigger/reminder.ts
Then in your backend code, you can create a schedule for each user:
Next.js API route
You can also retrieve, list, delete, deactivate and re-activate schedules using the SDK. More on that later.

Testing schedules

You can test a scheduled task in the dashboard. Note that the scheduleId will always come through as sched_1234 to the run.
There is no longer a standalone “Test” page in the sidebar. You test a task from the task itself — open it on the Tasks page and press the “Test schedule” button.
1

Open the test page for your task

On the “Tasks” page, open your scheduled task and press the “Test schedule” button.Scheduled task page
2

Run the test

Fill in the form [1]. You can select from a recent run [2] to pre-populate the fields. Press “Run test” when you’re ready Schedule test form

Managing schedules with the SDK

Retrieving an existing schedule

See the SDK reference for full details.

Listing schedules

See the SDK reference for full details.

Updating a schedule

See the SDK reference for full details.

Deactivating a schedule

See the SDK reference for full details.

Activating a schedule

See the SDK reference for full details.

Deleting a schedule

See the SDK reference for full details.

Getting possible timezones

You might want to show a dropdown menu in your UI so your users can select their timezone. You can get a list of all possible timezones using the SDK:
See the SDK reference for full details.