Schedulers and journey settings

Add recurring messages, tasks and AI flows to a journey, and set its starting fields, close policy, timing, exclusion group and interrupt handlers.

Besides its steps, every journey has two kinds of journey-wide setup in the builder: Schedulers (things that repeat on a calendar for as long as the patient is on the journey) and Settings (rules that apply to the whole journey). This page is for administrators who build journeys. Clinic-wide journey settings, such as quiet hours, are covered at the end.

Open a journey from Journeys and use the Schedulers and Settings buttons in the builder toolbar. Both buttons are unavailable when the journey is read-only for you.

Schedulers: recurring touchpoints

A scheduler fires on a repeating calendar, independent of the journey's steps. Use it for things like a daily wellness message, a weekly check-in task or a monthly summary.

Open the schedulers

Select Schedulers in the builder toolbar.

Expected result: The Recurring schedulers dialog opens. "No schedulers yet — add one to send on a recurring cadence." if there are none.

Add a scheduler

Select Add scheduler and enter a Label (required), for example "Daily 6am wellness quote".

Set the recurrence

In Repeats, choose Daily, Weekly (pick weekdays), Monthly (day of month) or Advanced (raw crontab). Set Hour (0–23) and Minute (0–59), plus On weekdays or Day of month (1–31) where needed. The dialog shows the Compiled cron and the Next 5 fire times. These are shown in UTC as an illustration; real times follow each patient's timezone.

Choose the timezone

In Timezone, choose Patient's timezone, Centre's timezone or Fixed timezone. For a fixed timezone, type the name in Fixed timezone (IANA), for example Asia/Kolkata.

Choose the action

In Action, choose Reach — send a message, Produce — run an AI flow or Engage — create a task, then fill in the same settings as the matching step. Produce always runs straight away ("Runs now (schedules always run in the foreground)"). Engage never waits for the task ("Fire-and-forget (schedules never wait)").

Set when to stop (optional)

Under Stop condition (optional), add a condition. When it matches, the scheduler stops for that patient.

Choose what happens to missed times

Under Missed-tick behaviour, choose Skip if stale (default) — drop missed ticks or Fire once — send a single catch-up for missed ticks.

Save and publish

Select Save, then publish the journey.

Expected result: Patients who start the journey from now on get the scheduler.

How schedulers behave

They start when the patient enters. A scheduler begins at enrolment and runs until its stop condition matches or the journey ends.
They need a publish, and only reach new patients. Schedulers are saved in the draft and take effect when you publish. Patients already on the journey stay on the version they started, so they never get a scheduler added in a later version. To give existing patients a new scheduler, cancel and re-enrol them.
Timezones fall back. Patient's timezone uses the patient's timezone, then the timezone of the patient's centre, then the clinic's Default timezone. Centre's timezone skips the patient's timezone. If no timezone can be found, the scheduler cannot fire for that patient. Set a Default timezone (see the end of this page) to avoid this.
Missed times. If a time was missed (for example the system was busy), Skip if stale drops it and waits for the next time. Fire once sends one catch-up, however many times were missed.
Where to see them. In the journey detail panel, upcoming scheduler times appear under Scheduled as "Next repeat".
Messages still pass the delivery checks. Quiet hours, consent and message timing policies apply as they do to any journey message.

Journey settings

Select Settings in the builder toolbar to open Journey settings. Select Save to store your changes ("Journey settings saved").

Most settings reach patients only with the next publish

Settings are saved straight away, but each published version keeps a copy of the settings as they were when it was published. Running patients use the copy in their version, and new patients use the copy in the latest published version. So a change to Initiation schema, On instance close, Timing, Global events & interrupt handlers or Booking profiles only takes effect after you publish again.

If you changed only settings, Publish shows "No draft changes to publish" and no new version is created. To publish a settings-only change, also make a change to the steps, connections or schedulers. Exclusion group is the exception: it applies to new enrolments as soon as you save.

Initiation schema

The typed fields a journey expects when it starts, such as a package ID or a referral reason. Entry rules use this list in Hand over these details, and required fields must be mapped there.

Select Add field, then set Field name, Type (string, number, boolean, datetime, uuid, object or array), Required and Description.
patient_id is always present and marked platform. You cannot remove it.
Field names must be unique ("Initiation field names must be unique").

On instance close

What happens when a patient's journey ends. "Tasks only — appointments are never auto-touched."

Open tasks policy option	What happens to the journey's open tasks
Cancel — close with reason journey_terminated:{outcome}	Cancelled. This is the default.
Leave open — tasks survive, correlation dropped	Stay on staff worklists, no longer linked to the journey.
Escalate to ops — auto-task to ops to decide	One new task is raised for the role set in Escalate closed journeys' open tasks to (System Settings), listing the open tasks. If no role is set, the tasks are left as they are.

An Engage, Capture or Sign step that sets its own rule for open tasks follows that rule instead.

Outcome aggregation has no effect

The Outcome aggregation setting (Last path wins (default) or Designated primary path's outcome) is saved but not used. A journey's outcome is always the Close step that ended it, or the last path to finish.

Timing

If a step is already in the past when a patient enters decides what happens when a timed wait would fall in the past, for example "3 days before the appointment" for a patient enrolled the day before.

Option	Effect
Skip it (default)	The wait is skipped.
Move it to now	The wait happens now instead.
Run it anyway	The step runs straight away.

Individual Pause steps can override this. See Waiting, time limits and reminders.

Exclusion group

A free-text group name. "Patients already in a journey of the same group are not admitted." Give two journeys the same name (for example ivf-cycle) when a patient must never be on both at once. A patient refused for this reason sees "is excluded by the rules of the journey" (see admission checks).

Global events & interrupt handlers

Journey-wide reactions to events that can happen at any point, such as the patient's consent being withdrawn. For each event, you add an ordered list of handlers: the first whose condition matches wins, so put a handler with no condition last.

Action	Effect
Interrupt → jump to node	Stops every live step and continues from the Target node.
Branch → jump to node	Starts an extra path at the Target node; current steps carry on.
Pause the journey	Pauses it.
Close the journey	Ends it, with the interrupt as the outcome.

Seven system events are always listed (marked system). If you add no handler, the default applies:

System event	Default
Bereavement recorded	closes the journey (default)
Consent revoked	closes the journey (platform rule — must close)
Programme suspended	pauses the journey (default)
Transfer of care	closes the journey (default)
Account blocked	pauses the journey (default)
A linked journey ended	does nothing until you choose
A linked journey was cancelled	does nothing until you choose

Consent revoked must close

For Consent revoked, the only allowed action is Close the journey ("Must close (platform rule)."). A journey with any other handler for it cannot be published. This keeps journeys from contacting a patient who has withdrawn consent. Consent revoked applies only when the patient has no other contact consent still granted.

To react to any other event, select Add event and pick it in Subscribe to event. Only events that can be waited for are offered (see Event catalog).

Booking profiles

Reusable defaults for Appointment steps in this journey. Select Add booking profile, enter a Profile name (for example "Dialysis session default") and an Appointment type, then set only what the profile should pin: Service default, Payment collection default, and optionally a centre, provider, slot or follow-up default. Appointment steps can use a profile and override single fields. See Appointment node.

Clinic-wide journey settings

Settings that apply to every journey are in SettingsPlatform ConfigurationSystem Settings, Journeys tab. Each one shows "Inherited — the platform default applies" until you set it.

Section	What it controls
Entering journeys	Re-entry cooldown (hours), Admissions per hour, Consent purposes required
Messaging hours	Quiet hours and Message timing policies
Times of day	Morning · Afternoon · Night: the clock times medication routines read these words as (default 08:00, 14:00, 20:00)
Staff & signing	Escalate closed journeys' open tasks to, Signing window (days, default 7), E-signature provider, Verification environment
Signing task wording	The title and instructions staff see on each kind of signing task
Waiting	While a step waits: defaults for Engage, Capture and Sign steps: Remind before the limit, Open task when the step moves on, Signing limit counted from
Schedules	Default timezone
Health	"Stalled" after (days, default 3)

Every field is described in the Notification, reminder and journey settings reference.

journeysschedulersrecurringsettingsinterruptsexclusion groupbooking profiles