Key Terms and How a Series Works

Most confusion with this plugin comes from one of four places: mixing up a feed with a series, expecting a backlog that doesn’t exist, expecting a feed edit to change running schedules, or expecting “start” to mean “submit”.

This page settles all four.

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The Glossary #

Term	Definition
Feed	A configuration saved on a form. It answers “how often, when, and until when.” A feed is a template.
Parent entry	A real entry someone submitted. It supplies the values that get repeated.
Series	One parent entry + one feed, actually running. A series is an instance.
Occurrence	One point in time when the series should submit.
Attempt	One actual run — successful, failed or skipped — with timestamps and an outcome.
Child entry	The new entry created by a successful attempt.
Target	The exact moment the next occurrence is due, stored with its timezone.
Worker	The background check that looks for due targets, every 15 minutes by default.
Heartbeat	The timestamp of the last completed worker check — proof WordPress really ran it.
Issue	An active problem on a series, opened by the first failure and closed by a success.

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One Feed, Many Series #

A feed does not run. A series runs.

Form "Monthly Inspection"
└── Feed "Monthly check-in"   (repeat every 1 month, 09:00)
    ├── Series for entry #101  → next run Oct 1, 09:00
    ├── Series for entry #118  → next run Oct 14, 09:00
    └── Series for entry #140  → next run Oct 22, 09:00

Each series was created when its parent entry was submitted, and each carries its own copy of the schedule. That is why:

• Three series from one feed can legitimately have three different next dates.
• Editing the feed changes what future series get — not these three.
• Changing these three is a separate, deliberate action (see Change the Schedule for Existing Series).

If the form has two active recurring feeds, one parent entry gets two independent series with their own cards, statuses and controls.

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A Series Holds One Target, Not a Queue #

This is the single most important behaviour to internalise.

A series stores one next target. It does not build a list of pending occurrences.

What that means in practice:

• If your site is offline for five days, a daily series does not owe you five submissions.
• On recovery it runs one overdue occurrence (or none, if the feed is set to skip) and then continues at its next future time.
• Successful counts and end dates behave accordingly — an outage never inflates them.

There is no setting that replays an outage. This is a design decision, not a limitation to work around; see Missed Runs and Downtime.

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The Life of One Occurrence #

1. Due — the target time passes.
2. Claimed — the next worker pass takes exclusive ownership of the series so nothing else can submit it.
3. Prepared — values are assembled, either from the snapshot or freshly from the parent entry.
4. Checked — optional conditional logic decides whether this occurrence should submit at all.
5. Submitted — Gravity Forms validates and saves a child entry, firing notifications, feeds and workflows.
6. Recorded — the attempt, its outcome, its lateness and the child entry ID are stored, and a note is added to the parent entry.
7. Rescheduled — the next target is calculated, or the series completes.

Every one of those steps is visible in View attempt history.

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Success, Failure and Skip Are Three Different Things #

Outcome	Child entry created?	Counts toward the limit?	Counts toward the failure threshold?
Success	Yes	Yes	No — it resets the count
Failure	No	No	Yes
Conditional skip	No	No	No
Skipped missed run	No	No	No

A skip is not a failure. A series that skips every occurrence because its conditional logic never passes will keep running quietly forever — it will not trip the failure threshold.

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Start, Run, Retry, Resume #

Four verbs, four different meanings.

Action	Submits now?	Effect on the schedule
Start Series From Now	No	Creates a schedule; the first occurrence is in the future.
Run Next Submission Now	Yes	Consumes the next slot; the underlying rhythm is preserved.
Retry Failed Submission	Yes	Re-runs the failed target. A success clears the issue.
Resume	No	Reopens a paused or stopped series at its next eligible future slot.

Manual actions always submit, however late the target is — the missed-run setting never applies to a button you pressed.