Scheduled Workflows

What are Scheduled Workflows?

Scheduled Workflows let you run any Velaro workflow on a cron schedule — every Monday at 9am, every hour, the first of the month, and so on. They apply to every integration: HubSpot, Shopify, Clover, Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Calendly, and any future connector. The workflow does not need a conversation to run — the schedule itself triggers it.

Setting a schedule

On any workflow, open Workflow Settings → Schedule:

1. Pick a preset (Every hour, Every weekday at 9am, First of the month, Every Monday at 9am, etc.) or paste a 5-field cron expression.
2. The editor shows the Next 3 Runs preview so you can confirm the schedule is what you expected.
3. Save. The schedule registers immediately — no deploy required.

Cron rules

• Standard 5-field cron: minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week.
• Minimum granularity is one minute. Sub-minute schedules are rejected.
• Six-field expressions (with seconds) are rejected.
• If the validator can't parse the cron, the workflow won't save — you'll see an inline error.

Run Now

Every workflow has a Run Now button. It executes the workflow against your site immediately, even if it has no schedule. You can paste an optional context override JSON to seed variables for the run — for example {"customerEmail": "test@example.com"} — which is useful for debugging or one-off operations.

Reusable sub-workflows

Workflows can call other workflows. The Sub-Workflow Picker is searchable and shows badges and last-edited dates so you can find the right one quickly. Common pattern: build one "Send Renewal Reminder" workflow, then call it from a scheduled workflow that loops over customers whose contract expires this week.

Example use cases

• Renewal reminders. Every Monday at 9am, find customers with subscriptions expiring this week and send a payment link via payment_create_link.
• Nightly CRM sync. Every night at 2am, pull new HubSpot contacts and create them in Mailchimp.
• Abandoned cart recovery. Every hour, check Shopify for new abandoned carts and send a recovery SMS.
• Recurring auto-charge. Every month on the 1st, charge the card-on-file for each active retainer customer using payment_charge_stored_card.
• Inventory check. Every weekday at 8am, scan Clover for low-stock items and alert the manager via SMS.

Usage meter and quotas

Scheduled runs count against your plan's monthly workflow-run quota. Open Account → Usage in the Velaro console to see six live progress bars: workflow runs, webhook invocations, HTTP action calls, conversations, and more.

Overage packs

If you hit your quota mid-month, buy a one-time pack so workflows keep running. Packs are purchased via Stripe Checkout from the Usage page:

Packs apply for the current billing month only and do not auto-renew.

Reliability

Scheduled workflows run on a durable background scheduler. If a run fails (for example a third-party API is down), the next scheduled run still fires on time — failed runs don't pile up or auto-retry indefinitely. A separate reconciler scans every five minutes for cron rows that should have run but didn't (e.g. after an infrastructure restart) and dispatches any missed runs.

Where to find it in the Velaro console

• Schedule: Workflows → (your workflow) → Settings → Schedule.
• Run Now: top of the workflow editor.
• Usage meter: Account → Usage.
• Overage packs: Account → Usage → Buy more.