--- title: How Scheduling Works description: "The calendar rules behind every target the plugin calculates — including the awkward cases: daylight saving, month ends, leap days and disallowed weekdays. --- ## Who Owns a Schedule An active recurring feed starts **one series per parent/feed pair** when…" url: "https://brightleafdigital.io/docs/how-scheduling-works/" updated: "2026-10-18" category: "Recurring Form Submissions for Gravity Forms / Explanations & Concepts" --- # How Scheduling Works The calendar rules behind every target the plugin calculates — including the awkward cases: daylight saving, month ends, leap days and disallowed weekdays. --- ## Who Owns a Schedule An active recurring feed starts **one series per parent/feed pair** when its initial conditional logic passes. At that moment, the feed's settings are copied into a **normalized schedule snapshot** on the series. From then on: | Action | Effect on existing series | | --- | --- | | Ordinary feed save | None. New series only. | | **Change next submission** | Moves that one series' target; the cadence continues from it. | | **Apply saved feed schedule** | Copies schedule settings to the series you select, after a preview and confirmation. | Recurrence changes belong in feed settings. Date moves belong in Queue. The separation is the point: neither one can surprise you with the other's effect. --- ## Local Time, Stored as UTC Calendar intervals are calculated in the schedule's **selected local timezone**, and stored as **UTC epoch targets**. That combination is what makes "every day at 11:00" mean 11:00 all year, while the stored value remains unambiguous. --- ## Daylight Saving | Case | Behaviour | | --- | --- | | **Ordinary DST change** | A daily 11:00 schedule stays at 11:00. | | **Spring-forward gap** | A time that doesn't exist moves to the **first valid instant after** the gap. | | **Autumn overlap** | A time that happens twice uses the **first** occurrence. | | **Fixed UTC offset** | Cannot follow DST at all. An 11:00 schedule effectively shifts by an hour for half the year. | Use an IANA timezone name — `America/New_York`, `Europe/London` — rather than an offset. The feed editor links to your WordPress timezone settings when it detects an offset. --- ## Month and Year Recurrence Monthly and yearly recurrence keeps an **anchor day**. - If the anchor day doesn't exist in a given period, the target **clamps to the last day** of that period. - When the anchor day exists again, the schedule **returns to it**. | Anchor | January | February | March | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 31st | Jan 31 | Feb 28 (clamped) | Mar 31 (restored) | | 29th | Jan 29 | Feb 29 in a leap year, Feb 28 otherwise | Mar 29 | Clamping never permanently drags a schedule earlier. --- ## Allowed Weekdays The **Monday–Sunday** checkboxes filter *when a slot may land*, without changing the underlying calendar anchor. - A slot landing on a disallowed weekday **moves forward** to the next allowed weekday. - The anchor itself is unchanged, so the schedule doesn't drift permanently. - If multiple slots coincide on the same eligible day, they produce **one** occurrence — never a burst. At least one weekday must remain selected. --- ## End Conditions | Condition | Rule | | --- | --- | | **Number of successful submissions** | Counts **successful children only**. The parent isn't counted; failures, conditional skips and skipped missed runs don't count. | | **End date** | **Inclusive** upper bound, evaluated in the schedule's timezone. | | **Number from parent form field** | The same counting rule, with the limit read from a Number field on the parent. | --- ## The First Occurrence A new schedule applies the **interval first**, then the clock time. > Daily feed. Parent submitted **September 14 at 01:14**. Specified time **01:20**. First run: **September 15 at 01:20**. Not six minutes later — a full day later, at the specified time. This avoids a surprise submission moments after someone fills in a form. When you want the earlier first run, **Change next submission** sets it explicitly. --- ## Run Time Modes | Mode | Behaviour | | --- | --- | | **Preserve original submission local time** | Each occurrence uses the parent's own submission time-of-day. Feeds saved before this setting existed behave this way. | | **Specified local time** | Every occurrence uses the `HH:MM` you set, in the schedule's timezone. | In *preserve* mode, the feed **preview** has to estimate — it uses "a parent submitted now". Once a series actually starts, it uses that parent's real timestamp. --- ## One Target at a Time The single most consequential rule in the plugin: > **A series holds one next target. It never accumulates a queue.** The next target is calculated **after** each attempt resolves. There is no list of pending occurrences, so there is nothing that could ever replay. This is why: - downtime never produces a backlog, - lateness never compounds, - and moving one target simply re-anchors everything after it. --- ## Manual Actions and the Anchor | Action | Effect on the rhythm | | --- | --- | | **Run Next Submission Now** | Consumes the next slot, **preserving** the long-term anchor. | | **Retry Failed Submission** | Re-runs the failed target. The anchor is unchanged. | | **Change next submission** | **Re-anchors** the cadence to the date and time you chose. | | **Resume** | Picks the next eligible **future** slot; the paused interval is skipped entirely. | Optionally shifting the cadence based on a manual run's time is on the roadmap.