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ado-aw

Writing schedule expressions

Writing schedule expressions

Section titled “Writing schedule expressions”

ado-aw lets you write schedules in a human-readable format instead of hand-writing cron.

You configure schedules under on.schedule.

Start with a simple schedule

Section titled “Start with a simple schedule”
on:
  schedule: daily around 14:00

This says: run every day at roughly 2 PM.

Use fuzzy human-readable expressions

Section titled “Use fuzzy human-readable expressions”

Here are common patterns you can use.

Daily

Section titled “Daily”
on:
  schedule: daily around 14:00
on:
  schedule: daily between 09:00 and 17:00

Weekly

Section titled “Weekly”
on:
  schedule: weekly on monday
on:
  schedule: weekly on friday around 17:00

Hour-based intervals

Section titled “Hour-based intervals”
on:
  schedule: every 6 hours

Other supported interval-style schedules include forms like every 2h and every 30m.

Add a timezone

Section titled “Add a timezone”

You can add UTC offsets directly in the expression.

on:
  schedule: daily around 14:00 utc+9
on:
  schedule: daily between 09:00 utc-5 and 17:00 utc-5

Use this when you want the schedule to reflect a team’s local business hours without manually converting everything to UTC.

Understand scattering

Section titled “Understand scattering”

ado-aw does not always compile a fuzzy schedule to the exact same wall-clock minute you typed.

Instead, it applies scattering: a deterministic offset that spreads runs out to avoid a thundering herd effect.

For example:

on:
  schedule: daily around 14:00

means:

  • stay near 14:00
  • pick a stable offset for this agent
  • avoid scheduling every agent at the exact same minute

This helps when many teams use convenient schedule times like midnight, 9 AM, or the top of the hour.

Know what happens at compile time

Section titled “Know what happens at compile time”

Azure DevOps pipelines ultimately need concrete schedule values. During compilation, ado-aw converts the fuzzy expression into a concrete schedule that Azure DevOps can run.

In practice, that means:

  • your human-readable expression is parsed
  • timezone offsets are converted to UTC
  • scattering is applied
  • the compiled pipeline gets a concrete cron-style schedule

You write the friendly expression; the compiler emits the precise schedule.

Schedule specific branches

Section titled “Schedule specific branches”

If you want more than the default branch behavior, use the object form:

on:
  schedule:
    run: weekly on monday around 09:00
    branches:
      - main
      - release/*

This is useful when scheduled automation should run on release branches as well as main.

Practical examples

Section titled “Practical examples”

Business-hours review agent

Section titled “Business-hours review agent”
on:
  schedule: daily between 09:00 and 17:00 utc-5

Use this for an agent that should run once each day during US Eastern business hours.

Weekly maintenance window

Section titled “Weekly maintenance window”
on:
  schedule: weekly on monday around 06:00 utc+1

Use this for a Monday morning maintenance agent.

Regular polling

Section titled “Regular polling”
on:
  schedule: every 6 hours

Use this when you need a repeated check throughout the day.

Tips for choosing a schedule

Section titled “Tips for choosing a schedule”
  • Use daily around ... for routine maintenance jobs.
  • Use weekly on ... for lower-frequency cleanup or reporting.
  • Use every N hours for repeated monitoring or polling.
  • Add a timezone when the schedule should track local working hours.
  • Let scattering do its job instead of trying to force an exact shared minute across many agents.