Scheduled Jobs

Scheduled jobs run on a cron-like schedule — every minute, every hour at :05, every Monday at 06:00, the first of each month. ActiveManage uses standard cron syntax so anyone familiar with Unix cron can read and write schedules.

Cron Syntax Refresher

Five fields, space-separated: minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week.

• 0 6 * * 1 — every Monday at 06:00.
• */5 * * * * — every 5 minutes.
• 0 */4 * * * — every 4 hours on the hour.
• 0 0 1 * * — at midnight on the first of each month.
• 0 9 * * 1-5 — at 09:00 every weekday.

Editor Features

• Friendly summary in plain English (“At 06:00 every Monday”).
• Next-run preview — shows when this schedule will next fire.
• Validation — refuses invalid syntax before save.
• Timezone — set per-job; defaults to platform timezone.

Worked Examples

• Nightly sync: 0 2 * * * — 02:00 daily, low-traffic window.
• Weekly digest: 0 8 * * 1 — Monday at 08:00, when users are at their desks.
• End-of-month invoicing: 0 1 1 * * — 01:00 on the 1st of each month.
• Heartbeat check: */5 * * * * — every 5 minutes; alert if any service is unreachable.
• Quarter-end reports: Run a workflow at 0 0 1 1,4,7,10 * — 1st of Jan/Apr/Jul/Oct at midnight.

Tip: Set the timezone explicitly. A schedule of 0 9 * * * means 09:00 in which zone — server, UTC, customer-local? Pick once and document it.

Jobs come in two flavours: those that should run once at a specific time, and those that should run repeatedly on a schedule. The platform supports both, and the choice changes how you reason about retries, cancellation and observability.

Run-Once Jobs

• Scheduled for a specific datetime.
• Runs exactly once at the scheduled time (or as soon as possible after).
• On completion, marked success or failed; can be re-queued manually.
• Useful for: one-off migrations, scheduled announcements, deferred actions.

Examples:

• Send a welcome email at 09:00 tomorrow.
• Run a one-time data migration script in production at the weekend.
• Publish a blog post at a future time.

Recurring Jobs

• Defined by a cron schedule.
• Runs every time the schedule fires, indefinitely.
• Can be paused (skip future runs) without deleting.
• Retains a configurable number of past execution records.
• Useful for: nightly syncs, periodic exports, regular cleanups, heartbeat checks.

Examples:

• Nightly Salesforce sync.
• Weekly subscription renewal reminder emails.
• Hourly cache-warm-up.
• Monthly invoice generation.

Designing the Right Job Type

• If it should happen once and never again → run-once. Don't make it recurring and then disable it after the first run.
• If it's part of an ongoing operational pattern → recurring. Don't manually re-queue a run-once after every cycle.
• If you need a backfill → run-once with a parameter range; recurring picks up future records only.

Worked Examples

• Migration from legacy CRM: Run-once, scheduled for the weekend cutover.
• Daily reconciliation: Recurring, 02:00 daily, retain last 30 executions for audit.
• Black Friday banner: Run-once at midnight to flip the homepage banner on, plus a paired run-once at midnight on Tuesday to flip it off.
• Subscription renewals: Recurring, 01:00 daily, paused over holidays via the “pause until” feature.