How scheduling works

The building blocks#

A schedule is an entry on your calendar. It has a name, a timing and a list of changes.

A change is one kind of edit to a set of items: "take 20% off these 140 variants", or "swap the main menu for the Black Friday menu". Each change has:

• a change type, like Variant prices or Navigation menu (every type);
• the items it changes, like products, entries or a menu;
• what it does at the start;
• what happens at the end: Revert, Set to something else or Keep.

Changes run in the order they're listed.

Timing#

Each schedule has its own time zone. Times are stored exactly, and shown in the schedule's zone.

Statuses#

A schedule moves through these statuses:

1. Draft: being set up. It never runs.
2. Scheduled: waiting for its start.
3. Live: its changes are made now.
4. Ended: it ran, and nothing more is due.

You can also Pause a schedule (nothing new starts; anything live still reverts at its end) or Archive it (it won't run again; anything live still reverts). An ended or archived schedule can't be edited: select Duplicate to run it again.

What happens at the start#

For each item, Metascheduler:

1. reads the current value and saves it (the snapshot);
2. writes the new value;
3. saves what it wrote.

If an item already has the value, nothing is written. A percentage is always worked out from the saved value, so a retry never takes 20% off twice.

What happens at the end#

For each item, depending on the change's end choice:

• Revert: if the live value is still what Metascheduler wrote, it puts back the saved value. If someone changed it, it leaves it alone and asks you. See How reverting works.
• Set to something else: writes the end value you chose.
• Keep: does nothing.

Late runs#

Metascheduler runs each start and end once, on time. If it can't run on time (say, Shopify was down), it follows these rules:

Run now, Retry and rollout starts aren't held by these rules.

Retries#

When Shopify is busy or unreachable, Metascheduler waits and tries again, up to 5 times, with longer waits each time. A change Shopify refuses (a value that isn't allowed, an item that's gone) isn't retried: that item fails and the rest carry on, and the run shows Partly done.

Conflicts#

When two schedules change the same item at overlapping times, the editor lists it under Conflicts, and the calendar flags both. It's a warning, not a block: the safe revert rules keep the overlap from clobbering either one.