Skip to content

How to schedule a recurring or before-event automation

Goal

Have Maggie create a task for you on a schedule — every weekday morning, every Monday, the first of the month — or a set time before something is due.

To run an automation each time something happens (a missed call, a review, an order), see How to run an automation when something happens.

Before you start

  • Automations live in Settings → Automations ("Scheduled reminders & tasks").
  • An automation creates a task with the title and details you give it. Maggie then works that task like any other.

Schedule a recurring automation

  1. Open Settings and choose Automations.
  2. Under What should happen?, type the task (for example Weekly review) and, if it helps, Details (optional) (for example Review last week's progress and plan the next).
  3. Under When should this run?, keep Recurring selected and pick one of the Schedule Presets: Every day at 9am, Every weekday at 9am, Every Monday at 9am, Every hour, Every 30 minutes, or First of month.

Step 3 — What should happen? filled in with Weekly review, and the Recurring tab of When should this run? with the six Schedule Presets, the Custom Cron Expression field and the Schedule Automation button

  1. Need a different schedule? Type it in Custom Cron Expression instead (for example 0 9 * * 1-5 for weekdays at 9am). The picker notes Using custom expression.
  2. Check Schedule Preview, then choose Schedule Automation. The automation appears under Your automations.

Schedule an automation before a date

  1. Under When should this run?, choose Before Event.
  2. Pick one of the Timing Presets — 15 minutes before, 30 minutes before, 1 hour before, 1 day before — or set Offset and Unit (Minutes, Hours, Days) yourself.
  3. Under Relative To, choose what the time counts back from: Task Due Date, Task Start Date, Meeting Start Time, or Project Deadline.

Step 3 — the Before Event tab: the four Timing Presets, Offset and Unit, the Relative To menu set to Task Due Date, and the Schedule Automation button

  1. Check Schedule Preview (… before task due date, for example), then choose Schedule Automation.

Managing a scheduled automation

Each card under Your automations shows what it does, its schedule (Runs on schedule: … or Runs … before …), whether it is Active or Paused, and how many times it has fired. Pause and Resume turn it off and on; the trash button deletes it after you confirm; Recent runs lists its last runs and says for each whether it ran, did not run (and why), or failed.

Verify it worked

After the next scheduled time, open Recent runs on the card: a line reading ran … means the task was created — you will find it in Tasks.

Troubleshooting

Problem What to do
It did not run at the time I expected Check the card's schedule line. Custom cron expressions use minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week.
It ran but I cannot find the task Look in Tasks; the task has the title you typed under What should happen?.
I want it to stop for a while Choose Pause on its card; Resume turns it back on.
  • How to run an automation when something happens