Scheduling Reports with Cron
Reports and proactive log analytic alerts can run at a variety of fixed intervals (e.g. hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, etc.).
You can define a custom schedule using cron expressions for when they should run.
Cron expression reference
Monitors use the Unix cron syntax and support five fields:
| Field | Valid values |
|---|---|
| Minute | 0-59 |
| Hour | 0-23 |
| Day of month | 1-31 |
| Month | 1-12 |
| Day of week | 0-7 (0 and 7 are both Sunday) or SUN, MON, TUE, WED, THU, FRI, SAT |
For example, the following expression translates to “every Monday through Friday at 11:30 AM”:
30 11 * * 1-5
Features
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
* |
Wildcard. Specifies all valid values. |
, |
List. Use to specify several values (e.g. 1,15,30). |
- |
Range. Use to specify a range of values (e.g. 1-15). |
/ |
Step. Use after a wildcard or range to specify the “step” between values. For example, 0-11/2 is equivalent to 0,2,4,6,8,10. |
Note that you can specify the day using two fields: day of month and day of week. For most situations, we recommend that you use just one of these fields and leave the other as *.
If you use a non-wildcard value in both fields, the monitor runs when either field matches the time. For example, 15 2 1,15 * 1 causes the monitor to run at 2:15 AM on the 1st of the month, the 15th of the month, and every Monday.
Sample expressions
Every other day at 1:45 PM:
45 13 1-31/2 * *
Every 10 minutes on Saturday and Sunday:
0/10 * * * 6-7
Every three hours on the first day of every other month:
0 0-23/3 1 1-12/2 *