Schedule a Workflow

A scheduled workflow has a schedule trigger instead of a form trigger. FlowMint creates a timer for it in Action Scheduler when you save it enabled, and removes the timer when you disable or delete it.

When to use it

Periodic housekeeping, such as deleting form entries older than 90 days.
Keeping records in step with another system; see Importing records.
A regular report or reminder sent by email or to another system.

For something that should happen once, a set time after a submission, a schedule is the wrong tool: there is no “run once at” trigger.

The schedule trigger

{
  "trigger": { "type": "schedule", "interval": "weekly", "day_of_week": 1, "hour": 9, "minute": 0 },
  "steps": [ … ]
}

Key	What it does	Default
`interval`	`hourly`, `twicedaily`, `daily` or `weekly`. Required.	—
`hour`	0–23, for `daily` and `weekly`.	2
`minute`	0–59, for `daily` and `weekly`.	0
`day_of_week`	1 (Monday) to 7 (Sunday), for `weekly`.	1

Times are in the site’s timezone, set under Settings → General, not the server’s. hourly first runs one hour after you save, and twicedaily 12 hours after; both ignore hour and minute. A workflow has one trigger, so it runs either on a schedule or after a form, not both.

What a scheduled run can read

There is no form entry behind a scheduled run, so data, labels, entry and entry_files are empty and form.id is blank. Saving warns when a scheduled workflow uses data, entry or entry_files.

You can use now(…), env.site_name, env.site_url, env.admin_email, run.id, run.started_at, workflow.id, vars.* and the output of earlier steps.

Example: nightly entry clean-up

{
  "trigger": { "type": "schedule", "interval": "daily", "hour": 2, "minute": 0 },
  "steps": [
    { "name": "find_old", "type": "fre_list_entries",
      "config": { "older_than_days": 90, "limit": 500 } },
    { "name": "purge", "type": "fre_delete_entries",
      "config": { "entries": "{{ steps.find_old.entries }}" } },
    { "name": "report", "type": "log_info",
      "config": { "message": "Deleted {{ steps.purge.deleted_count }} entries, {{ steps.purge.failed_count }} failed." } }
  ]
}

Without a form_id, fre_list_entries covers every form. Add one to limit it to a single form, and make one workflow per form for different retention periods.

How to check it is scheduled

Open Tools → Scheduled Actions (on a WooCommerce site, WooCommerce → Status → Scheduled Actions).
Search for fmw_scheduled_workflow_tick. Each enabled scheduled workflow has one pending action with its workflow id in the arguments and the next run time.
After that time, its run appears in FlowMint Workflows → Run History with an empty form and entry #0.

To run it now, choose Run on that pending action. The next regular run keeps its time. Once a run exists, you can also replay it.

Limits and common problems

Missed runs are not made up. If WP-Cron does not fire for a while, the workflow runs once when it next fires, not once for each missed time, and a late run moves the following runs later by the same amount until FlowMint’s daily check resets the timers. A real cron job prevents both; see Installation and setup.
Runs can overlap. A run still going when the next is due does not stop the next. Keep each run short, for example with a limit on fre_list_entries.
No cron expressions or per-workflow timezones. Only the four intervals, in site time.
The timer is missing. FlowMint re-creates missing timers once a day. Saving the workflow again re-creates its timer at once. Check that it is enabled and its interval is one of the four values.

Available since FlowMint Workflows 0.6.0.