Scheduler

Triggering flows

Overview

The Scheduler Helper allows you to trigger flow runs automatically at regular interval or just once.

The Scheduler Helper must be the first step in the Flow. To activate the scheduler, set the Flow to status active.

Actions

The Scheduler Helper has only one default action - Schedule Flows.

On the screenshot, you see the options you have for scheduling flows:

Scheduler settings

Start Date Time

Required

The Start Date Time Is required to determine the first time a flow should ever run.

The time you take is your local time and is converted to UTC in the background. Meaning, that if your browser time-zone is based in London and you set the Start Date Time to start at 9 am, this will trigger a flow at 10 am Central European time.

End Date Time

Optional

The End Date Time sets until which date time a Flow should be scheduled. This is entirely optional as a flow may run indefinitely.

Interval

Required

The Interval is the crucial piece of every scheduler and has the following options:

• every 5 mins - Runs every 5 minutes

• every 15 mins - Runs every 15 minutes

• every hour - runs hourly

• daily - runs every day regardless of any selection of weekdays

• weekly - runs every week on the specified weekdays

• monthly - The flow will run monthly on the same day of the month. For example, if the start date is the 11 of March, the flow will always run on the 11th of each following month until the end date or if it is not chosen, indefinitely. Each case: If you schedule it on the 30 of June, the flow will always run on the 30th of each month, and in the case of February, having usually only 28 days, the flow will run on the last day of February. Meaning, that if a month has fewer days than the chosen day, the flow will run on the last day of the month. We found that this serves most business cases and hopefully also yours.

• once - Only runs once ever

• custom - Runs according to the set Custom Interval

Interval options

Custom Interval (Minutes)

Required and only takes effect for Interval custom

When the Interval is set to custom, the Custom Interval (Minutes) must be used. The minimum interval is 5 minutes and the maximum is 1440 minutes (1 day).

Weekdays (required for interval weekly)

Required and only takes effect for Interval weekly

When the Interval is set to weekly, Weekdays needs to be used. If no days are selected (and the interval is weekly), then the flow will be scheduled to run on all days.

Allow Parallel Flow Executions

Optional

The Allow Parallel Flow Executions setting determines whether Flow Runs are allowed to run in parallel if they are triggered by the Scheduler. Parallel Flow Execution happens if the Scheduler interval is set to a shorter time than the Flow Run duration (e.g. the interval is set to every5mins, but the Flow Run takes 12 minutes).

• If it's allowed (default), the next Flow Run (and all following ones) will happen as scheduled

• If it's not allowed, all scheduled Flow Runs will be skipped (appearing with status skipped in the Flow Debugger) until there are no more running Flow Runs that were triggered by the Scheduler

This only applies to Flow Runs where the currently running and the run that might be canceled were triggered by the Scheduler. Thus, when manually triggering a Flow and then a scheduled Flow Run happens, the scheduled Flow Run will not be canceled, even if the manually triggered Flow Run is still running.

Run right away after enabling

Optional

The Run right away after enabling setting controls whether the Flow should start immediately after being activated. When this option is enabled, the Flow will run right away under these conditions:

• The Scheduler interval is weekly, and today's weekday is not one of the selected weekdays.

• There are no previous scheduled runs. For example, if the Flow was paused and then reactivated, it should not run immediately upon reactivation.

After this initial run, the Flow will follow its regular schedule, such as running on specific days like Mondays and Fridays.

"Run right after enabling" settings example