ScheduledTrigger NodeTypeCode: schedule-trigger

When to Use

• Daily report generation at 9 AM weekdays: A payroll summary report is generated every morning before the team starts work. The workflow queries the HRMS, computes attendance and exceptions, formats an Excel report, and emails it to department heads — all without human initiation.
• Hourly data sync from an external API: A product catalog sync workflow runs every hour, pulls changed records from a supplier's REST API, normalizes the data, and upserts into the internal database to keep inventory data fresh throughout the business day.
• Monthly billing calculation on the 1st: On the first day of every month at midnight, the billing workflow aggregates usage metrics for all active subscription accounts, calculates charges, generates invoices, and queues them for the accounts receivable system.
• Weekly cleanup of expired records: Every Sunday at 2 AM, a maintenance workflow deletes workflow execution logs older than 90 days, purges expired session tokens, and vacuums database tables — keeping storage costs and query performance optimal.
• Every 15 minutes monitoring check: A health-check workflow polls external API endpoints and internal services, compares response times and status codes against SLA thresholds, and fires a PagerDuty alert if any service is degraded.

Configuration

Cron Expression Reference

Cron fields (left to right): minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week [second]

Output Ports

Output Fields

Sample Configuration

{
  "nodeType": "schedule-trigger",
  "settings": {
    "Schedule": "0 9 * * 1-5"
  }
}

This fires at 9:00 AM Monday through Friday. The downstream nodes receive trigger_time (the 9:00 AM UTC timestamp) and trigger_type = "scheduled".

Sample Output

Success Port

{
  "triggeredAt": "2025-03-15T08:00:00.000Z",
  "scheduledAt": "2025-03-15T08:00:00.000Z",
  "cronExpression": "0 8 * * 1-5",
  "timezone": "America/New_York",
  "executionId": "exec_20250315_080000",
  "workflowId": "wf_daily_report",
  "iterationCount": 45,
  "driftMs": 12
}

Expression Reference

Node Policies & GuardRails

Pattern Examples

Pattern 1 — Daily 9 AM Payroll Exception Report

Fires every weekday at 9 AM. Queries for employees with missing clock-in records from the previous day and emails a formatted exception report to payroll administrators.

// ScheduledTrigger settings
{
  "Schedule": "0 9 * * 1-5"
}

// Downstream CodeExecute — compute yesterday's date from trigger_time
var t = new Date(trigger_time);
t.setDate(t.getDate() - 1);
result = { processingDate: t.toISOString().substring(0, 10) };

// Downstream VariableAssignment — store for use in query nodes
{
  "VariableName": "reportDate",
  "ValueExpression": "{{ $output.dateCalc.result.processingDate }}"
}

// Downstream DB query uses: WHERE work_date = '{{ $var.reportDate }}'

Pattern 2 — Monthly Invoice Generation on the 1st

Fires at midnight on the first day of each month. Queries all active subscriptions, calculates charges, generates invoice PDFs, and queues for dispatch.

// ScheduledTrigger settings
{
  "Schedule": "0 0 1 * *"
}

// Downstream CodeExecute — compute billing period (previous month)
var t = new Date(trigger_time);
var year = t.getFullYear();
var month = t.getMonth(); // 0-indexed, so this IS the previous month
if (month === 0) { month = 12; year = year - 1; }
var monthStr = month.toString().padStart(2, "0");
result = {
  billingYear: year,
  billingMonth: monthStr,
  billingPeriod: year + "-" + monthStr
};

Pattern 3 — Every 15 Minutes Service Health Check

Polls a list of internal service endpoints every 15 minutes, checks response times and HTTP status codes, and fires a PagerDuty alert if any service fails its SLA threshold.

// ScheduledTrigger settings
{
  "Schedule": "*/15 * * * *"
}

// Downstream CodeExecute — define services to check
result = {
  services: [
    { name: "Auth API",      url: "https://auth.internal/health",    slaMs: 200 },
    { name: "Order API",     url: "https://orders.internal/health",  slaMs: 300 },
    { name: "Payment API",   url: "https://payments.internal/health", slaMs: 500 }
  ],
  checkTime: trigger_time
};
// Downstream Loop + HttpRequest: check each service
// Downstream CollectionOperation filter: item.responseMs > item.slaMs
// Downstream IfCondition: if any failures, fire PagerDuty alert node