Scheduled work items
Ask any agent to do something once, later: "post this in the EMT channel tomorrow at 9:00", "send me the summary of this thread on Friday at 17:00". The agent schedules a scheduled work item and the platform runs it at that time by itself. There is nothing to set up: no assignment, no flow, and no built-in tool to enable. Recurring work stays with assignments.
Schedule from a chat
Every agent can schedule, list, cancel and reschedule its own one-off actions, whatever its built-in tool selection. These four tools cannot be removed from an agent: an agent's tool deny list refuses them. Only an administrator can turn scheduling off, for the whole platform (see Turn scheduling off).
A scheduled action takes one of two forms:
| Form | What runs at that time |
|---|---|
| Exact | One of the agent's tools, exactly as it was prepared when you asked: the message text, its mentions and its target are sent as stored, with no model involved. Use it when the content is final. |
| Instruction | The agent runs the instruction in a background run, with its tools, as when you chat with it. Use it when the agent should work something out at that time ("check the open incidents and post a summary"). |
The action runs as you: with your rights on the agent and with the integrations the agent uses for you. When it is scheduled from a conversation, its outcome is posted back into that conversation, and you receive a notification.
Right after the agent schedules it, the conversation shows a card with:
- the time it runs, in your time zone (and in UTC),
- the action (exact tool or instruction) and where it goes,
- a preview of the content,
- Cancel and Reschedule buttons.
Times always carry a time zone
A scheduled time is always stored with its UTC offset. A time without one is refused rather than read as UTC, and every message gives the time in your time zone and in UTC. Set your time zone in your profile so the agent and the card use it. When the offset an agent wrote is not your time zone on that date (for example across a daylight saving change), the agent is told, so it can reschedule.
What happens at the time
The platform checks, every minute, for scheduled items that are due, and runs each one once:
- The item is claimed, and one run is created for it. The run shows in Operations > Executions and in the agent's Activity tab, labelled Scheduled and linked to its work item.
- Before anything is sent, everything is checked again: that scheduling is still on, that the agent still exists and is enabled, that your account is active and can still use the agent, that agentic AI is available on the platform, and, for an exact action, that the tool is still available to the agent for you (its integration connected and shared with you, the tool not denied or held for approval). If a check fails, nothing runs and the item is blocked with the reason.
- The action runs. A successful one ends done, with what the tool or the agent returned as proof (for example the message id and link). A failed one ends blocked, with the error.
A failure is retried only when the action provably did not reach its target (the platform could not read whether AI is available, the target answered "too many requests", the model provider was unreachable before any tool ran), at most a few times. A refused check, an invalid payload and an error the tool returned are never retried, so a message is never sent twice. If the platform restarts while an action is being sent, the item is blocked as interrupted rather than sent again: check, and reschedule it if needed.
Missed items
An item is run up to 15 minutes late (for example when the platform was busy). Past that window it is missed: it is not run at a time nobody chose, it is marked missed everywhere it appears, and you are notified. Reschedule it to run it, or cancel it.
Where scheduled items appear
| Where | What you see |
|---|---|
| The conversation | The card, then the outcome when it ran. |
| Agentic Flow > Schedule | One-off items next to the assignment triggers, in the same timeline and inventory, marked One-off (assignments are Recurring). Open it on one agent with the agent's Coming up card. |
| Operations > Work Items | Scheduled items are ordinary work items with a Scheduled marker: the time in your time zone, the tool and target, a content preview, and once run its outcome (done, blocked, missed) with a link to its run. The Scheduled filter shows them alone. |
| The agent's Overview | A Coming up card: your scheduled items on that agent and its next assignment triggers, with Cancel and Reschedule. |
| Operations > Executions and the agent's Activity | Each run, labelled Scheduled, linked to its work item. |
A scheduled item is private to the person who scheduled it, whatever the agent: it runs with their identity and shows their content.
Manage scheduled items
From the chat, ask the agent to list, cancel or reschedule what it scheduled for you. From the screens above, use Cancel or Reschedule on the item. Cancelling before the time runs nothing and creates no run. A running item can no longer be cancelled or rescheduled, and an item that ran cannot be moved: schedule a new one.
Scheduled items cannot be claimed, completed or handed to another agent: those are the work items tools of the optional Work Items built-in tool, which only handle the other work items. An agent that also has a work-item assignment never receives scheduled items, and the scheduler never runs the other work items.
Every scheduled item is recorded in the audit log: who scheduled it and the exact action stored, each cancel and reschedule, each change to its action, and the run that executed it.
Turn scheduling off
An administrator turns scheduling off for the whole platform in Settings > Security > Security options (Scheduled work items, or SCHEDULED_WORK_ITEMS_ENABLED=false). While it is off, every agent's scheduling tools answer that scheduling is disabled by the administrator, and nothing is dispatched; items that come due meanwhile are marked missed. Listing and cancelling keep working. The emergency stop also stops a scheduled run in progress.