Schedules guide

When to use a schedule

Schedules add a steady rhythm against your live sitemap. They are available on the free plan alongside manual dashboard runs and saved history.

Many teams use all three: CI on staging, schedules on production, and manual runs when investigating a specific change.

Create a schedule

1. Sign in and open Schedules.
2. Click Add schedule.
3. Set a name, sitemap URL, recurrence, and optional crawl limits.
4. Choose Signal Diff cloud or Customer agent as the execution target.
5. Save. The schedule list shows Last run, Next run (UTC), and Last skipped for each entry.

Recurrence and UTC

All schedule times are evaluated in UTC. The form labels times as UTC; the schedule table shows next run in UTC as well. Convert from your local timezone when picking a time—for example, 08:00 UTC is 09:00 in London (GMT) or 03:00 in New York (EST).

Daily

Runs every day at the chosen UTC time. Signal Diff stores this as a cron expression minute hour * * * (for example 30 8 * * * = 08:30 UTC daily).

Weekly

Runs once per week on the selected day at the chosen UTC time. Stored as minute hour * * day where day is 0 (Sunday) through 6 (Saturday)—for example 0 9 * * 3 = Wednesday at 09:00 UTC.

Custom cron

Use five-field standard cron syntax (minute, hour, day-of-month, month, day-of-week), still in UTC:

Invalid expressions are rejected when you save. If you are unsure, start with Daily or Weekly and switch to custom cron only when you need finer control.

Execution target and agent pools

When you choose Customer agent, optionally set an Agent pool ID. The pool on the schedule must match the pool on the enrolled agent—otherwise jobs stay pending. Leave the pool empty on both sides to use the default pool.

Enroll agents and verify heartbeats on Customer agents. For install, pools, and troubleshooting, see Customer agent setup.

Enabled vs paused

• Enabled (checkbox when creating or editing) — the schedule is active and will fire on the next due occurrence.
• Paused — toggle the row switch on the schedule list to disable without deleting. Paused schedules do not start new runs; settings are preserved.
• Delete — removes the schedule permanently. Past runs started by that schedule remain in history.

How scheduled runs appear in history

Completed scheduled crawls appear on the Dashboard like manual runs when they share the same sitemap URL. Run history shows a trigger badge such as Scheduled: Daily production audit (your schedule name).

• Overview cards and Top issues include the latest scheduled run the same way as a manual scan.
• Deploy diff compares against the prior completed run on that site—see Baselines and diffs.
• Execution route — History and the report header show Cloud or Agent (with pool) so you can confirm routing.

If a scheduled start fails (for example concurrent run limits), the schedule row records Last skipped with a timestamp. A failed start may still create a failed run entry you can open from history.

Complement CI, do not replace it

Pipelines excel at checking the environment you just deployed—often staging or a preview URL—and failing the build when new regressions appear. Schedules excel at watching production on a fixed clock, reflecting what users and crawlers see between deploys.

Use CI and GitHub Actions for release gates and Schedules for ongoing production monitoring. Both append to the same site history when they crawl the same sitemap URL.

Troubleshooting