Scheduled runs
Schedules let your agents run automatically on a repeating timetable — no human trigger required. Use them for nightly digests, hourly monitoring, weekly reports, or any routine task where the timing matters more than a conversation prompt.
Each schedule fires an agent on a cron expression you define, runs the task's prompt against any connected knowledge and skills, and records the result in the Activity log.
Creating a schedule
Go to Agentic > Schedules and click New schedule. You can also create schedules through the task creation wizard or via the MCP tool create_task_schedule.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Name | A human-readable label shown in the Schedules list (e.g. Nightly sales digest) |
| Task | The task this schedule fires. The task carries the prompt the agent sees on each run |
| Agent | Which agent runs the task. Defaults to the first agent assigned to the task |
| Cron expression | When to fire — standard 5-field format (see below) |
| Timezone | IANA timezone the cron is evaluated in. Defaults to UTC |
| Retries | How many times to retry automatically if the run fails (0–3) |
| Enabled | Toggle on/off without deleting the schedule |
Cron syntax
Schedules use standard 5-field cron expressions:
┌─ minute (0–59) │ ┌─ hour (0–23) │ │ ┌─ day (1–31) │ │ │ ┌─ month (1–12) │ │ │ │ ┌─ weekday (0–7, 0 and 7 = Sunday) │ │ │ │ │ * * * * *
Common expressions:
| Expression | When it fires |
|---|---|
0 9 * * 1-5 | 9:00 am, Monday–Friday |
0 8 * * * | 8:00 am every day |
0 */6 * * * | Every 6 hours |
0 9 1 * * | 9:00 am on the 1st of every month |
30 17 * * 5 | 5:30 pm every Friday |
Minimum interval: Schedules must fire no more often than every 5 minutes. Expressions that resolve to shorter gaps (including */1 * * * * or similar) are rejected at save time.
Timezones
The cron expression is evaluated in the timezone you set. For example, 0 9 * * 1-5 with timezone Europe/London fires at 9am London time, automatically adjusting for BST/GMT transitions — you don't need to update the expression when clocks change.
Use any IANA timezone identifier (e.g. America/New_York, Asia/Tokyo, Europe/Paris). The field defaults to UTC if left blank.
Retries
If a run fails, the schedule can automatically retry before sending a failure notification. Each retry consumes credits from your balance.
| Setting | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| 0 retries (default) | Failure → email notification immediately |
| 1–3 retries | Elaras retries up to that many times; notification only fires if all attempts fail |
The Activity log records each attempt separately so you can see which retry succeeded or what error each attempt produced.
Monitoring schedules
The Schedules tab shows every schedule with its current state:
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| Last fired | When the schedule last dispatched a run |
| Next fire | When the next run is due (blank if disabled) |
| Status | Enabled or disabled |
Click a schedule to edit it. Disabling a schedule clears the next fire time; re-enabling it recomputes the next run from the current time.
To see the results of past runs, go to Agentic > Activity and filter by trigger type Scheduled.
Limits
| Limit | Value |
|---|---|
| Schedules per team | 20 (active + inactive combined) |
| Minimum fire interval | 5 minutes |
| Maximum retries per run | 3 |
Creating via MCP
If you use the Ask MCP server, you can create schedules programmatically with create_task_schedule:
{ "tool": "create_task_schedule", "arguments": { "task_id": 12, "name": "Nightly sales digest", "cron_expression": "0 8 * * *", "timezone": "Europe/London", "enabled": true, "max_retries": 1 } }
The chatbot_id field is optional — when omitted, the first agent assigned to the task is used automatically. Elaras validates the cron expression and returns the computed next_dispatch_at in the response.