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Schedules

In the Schedules menu you can create task scheduling rules for your Automations. This is useful for tasks that need to run at specific times, or for tasks that need to run regularly.

View Schedules

On this screen, you can view a summary of the Schedules via the following cards:

  • Total Schedules: The total number of Schedules created.
  • Active Schedules: The number of active Schedules.
  • Inactive Schedules: The number of inactive Schedules.

Below the summary, you can view the schedules in a list format with the following columns:

  • Name: The name of the schedule.
  • Automation: The automation linked to the schedule.
  • Rule: The scheduling rule defined, such as frequency and execution time.
  • Status: Button to activate or deactivate the schedule.
  • Actions menu: Available actions for the schedule:

Screenshot of BotCity Orchestrator showing the Schedules menu. The page is titled 'Schedules' with the 'New Schedule' button in the top-right corner. Below are the filter and sorting fields, the summary cards Total schedules, Active schedules and Inactive schedules, and the list of schedules with the columns Name, Automation, Rule, Status and the actions menu.

Create a schedule

To create a schedule, click the New Schedule + button. You will be redirected to the two-step schedule creation page.

1. Automation

In the first step, fill in the automation information and click Next.

  • Automation: Select the automation you want to schedule.
  • Schedule name: Fill in the name to identify the schedule.
  • Priority: Set the priority of the tasks created by the schedule.
  • Parameters: If the automation has parameters, you can fill them in this field.

Time zone

BotCity Orchestrator server times are in UTC. Therefore, if you are in any other time zone, you will need to adjust the schedule.

Screenshot of BotCity Orchestrator showing the New Schedule form on step 1 - Automation. It displays the warning about the servers' UTC time zone and the fields Automation, Schedule Name, Priority and Parameters. At the bottom, the Cancel and Next buttons.

2. Schedule

In this step you define the schedule type by calendar or CRON expression.

Time zone

BotCity Orchestrator server times are in UTC. Therefore, if you are in any other time zone, you will need to adjust the time in the calendar or the CRON expression to match your time zone.

Here's an example of this time zone adjustment:

I am in Brazil and would like to schedule tasks for my automation every day at 10:00 AM Brasília standard time (GMT-3).

  • The time in the calendar would be 10:00.

  • Since the server time is in UTC, you will need to adjust the time to 13:00.

  • The Quartz Cron expression would be 0 0 10 ? * * .

  • With the time zone correction, it becomes: 0 0 13 ? * * .
  • This will schedule the tasks to run at 13:00 UTC, which is 3 hours before Brasília standard time.

Screenshot of BotCity Orchestrator showing step 2 - Schedule of the New Schedule form, with the Schedule Type field expanded showing the Calendar and Cron Expression options.

Calendar

By selecting the Calendar option, you can define a simpler schedule, with a daily, weekly or monthly frequency, for example.

  • Repeat frequency: Leads to the repeat frequency options.

  • One-time execution: Leads to creating a new one-time task.

    Screenshot of BotCity Orchestrator showing step 2 - Schedule with the Schedule Type set to Calendar and the Scheduling Frequency field with the Repeat frequency option selected.

When selecting the Repeat frequency option, you define the task creation frequency:

  • Minute: repeats the task at the defined minute interval (from 1 to 59).
  • Hour: repeats the task at the defined hour interval (from 1 to 23).
  • Day: repeats the task at the defined day interval, at a specific time.
  • Week: repeats the task on the selected days of the week, at a specific time.
  • Month: repeats the task on the selected day of the month, at a specific time.

The Scheduling policy field is automatically generated according to the selected calendar.

The next field refers to the Start Configuration, the options are:

  • Immediately: The rule is applied immediately.

  • Start on a specific date: The rule will start from the chosen date.

    Screenshot of BotCity Orchestrator showing the Start Preferences field expanded, with the Immediately and Start on a specific date options, along with the already filled Scheduling Frequency and Schedule Strategy fields.

Once the fields are filled in, you can view a summary of the schedule created and click Schedule to finish.

Screenshot of BotCity Orchestrator showing the schedule summary (Scheduling Summary) with the Automation, Schedule Name, Schedule Strategy and Priority information, and the Back and Schedule buttons.

CRON Expression

By selecting the CRON expression option, you can define more complex schedules, since it is more powerful and flexible.

Fill in the CRON scheduling string field with the desired rule.

CRON expression example

With the CRON expression 0 */5 * ? * * defined for an automation, the BotCity Orchestrator automatically creates a new task in the queue every 5 minutes.

Accepted format

The CRON expression string is not the standard CRON expression format. The BotCity Orchestrator uses the Quartz CRON expression format.

The Cronwise site offers a great tool for generating CRON expressions, as well as describing them and showing the next execution dates.

The Scheduling policy field is automatically generated according to the filled CRON string.

Once the fields are filled in, you can view a summary of the schedule created and click Schedule to finish.

Screenshot of BotCity Orchestrator showing step 2 - Schedule with the Schedule Type set to Cron Expression, the CRON Scheduling String field filled in, and the schedule summary (Scheduling Summary).

Actions

You can perform some actions in the Actions menu of a schedule.

Screenshot of BotCity Orchestrator showing the schedule list with the actions menu of a schedule open, displaying the Info, Edit and Delete options.

Information

In the Info option, you can view the schedule summary and the history of tasks created by the scheduler.

Screenshot of BotCity Orchestrator showing the Schedule Info page with the schedule summary (Scheduling Summary) and the execution history (Running history), containing the columns Id Task, Scheduling time, Executed time and State.

Edit schedule

In the Edit option, you can change the information of an existing schedule:

  • Schedule name
  • Parameters
  • Schedule type
  • Frequency
  • Initial preferences

Delete schedule

In the Delete option, you can remove the schedule from the list.

Screenshot of BotCity Orchestrator showing the confirmation window to delete a schedule, with the title 'Delete consult', the question 'Confirm scheduling delete?' and the No and Yes buttons.