Special cases in job schedules
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Summary of Special cases in job schedules
This guidance addresses specific considerations for scheduling jobs in ServiceNow, particularly for end-of-month timing, weekday-only execution, and handling scheduled jobs imported from other instances. Understanding these nuances helps ensure scheduled jobs run accurately and reliably, avoiding common pitfalls related to date variability and platform constraints.
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End of the month schedules
Because month lengths vary, avoid scheduling jobs on the 29th or 30th to prevent inconsistent execution in shorter months like February. Scheduling on the 31st will cause the job to run on the last day of shorter months (e.g., February 28 or 29 in leap years), ensuring the job still executes but on the final day available.
Weekday schedules
To run scheduled scripts only on weekdays, use a client-side script that checks the current day of the week and returns true for Monday through Friday, false for Saturday and Sunday. For scheduled report emails, which run scripts in a sandbox environment, function definitions and some API calls are restricted. If complex logic is needed, implement the conditional logic inside a Scheduled Job and trigger the Scheduled Report programmatically from there, using the report’s sysid.
Executing scheduled jobs from scripts
You can trigger scheduled jobs programmatically by querying the relevant table (such as scheduledimportset, sysautoscript, sysautotemplate, or sysautoreport) and executing the job immediately using SncTriggerSynchronizer.executeNow(). Note that this method only executes jobs immediately and does not schedule future executions.
Running scheduled scripts and jobs imported from another instance
Scheduled Script Execution and Scheduled Jobs are data records excluded from update sets by default, so importing them requires exporting/importing XML data. However, Schedule Item [systrigger] records are not automatically created when importing, meaning the jobs will not run until the records are updated in the target instance. To activate imported scheduled jobs, manually update their records post-import.
Some special cases require care in job scheduling.
End of the month schedules
Because months have different lengths, take care when scheduling jobs for the end of the month.
- Scheduling an event for the 29th or 30th is not recommended, because the scheduled job is executed in months (like February) which are shorter than those dates.
- If an event is scheduled for the 31st, it executes on the last day of the month, even if the month is shorter.
For example, something scheduled to run on the 31st of the month runs on February 28 or February 29 in a leap year.
Weekday schedules
For scheduled scripts, use the following script to run only on weekdays:
var isWeekday;
var today = new Date();
var dayOfWeek = today.getDay(); // Get day of the week(0 = Sunday, 1 = Monday, ... , 6 = Saturday)
switch (dayOfWeek) {
case 0: // Sunday
case 6: // Saturday
isWeekday = false;
break;
default:
isWeekday = true;
}
answer=isWeekday;If the conditional script on a Scheduled Report is more complex and you need to make use of our Glide classes, then please use the following steps as a workaround:
- Create a Scheduled Job and complete all the conditional logic of the Scheduled Report inside the Scheduled Job.
- If all the conditional logic is satisfied, you can trigger the Scheduled Report with the following script inside the Scheduled Job.
var schRpGr = new GlideRecord("sysauto_report"); schRpGr.get("<sys_id of the scheduled report>"); gs.executeNow(schRpGr);
Scheduled jobs from scripts
To execute a scheduled job triggered by an event, use the following script:
//Execute a scheduled script job
var rec = new GlideRecord('sysauto_script');
rec.get('name', 'YOUR_JOB_NAME_HERE');
SncTriggerSynchronizer.executeNow(rec);- scheduled_import_set (Scheduled Import Sets)
- sysauto_script (Scheduled Script Execution)
- sysauto_template (Scheduled Template Generation)
- sysauto_report (Scheduled Report)
SncTriggerSynchronizer does not provide methods to execute
scheduled jobs in the future.Running scheduled scripts and jobs imported from another instance
Scheduled Script Execution and Scheduled Jobs are categorized as data records in the ServiceNow AI Platform, which means they are excluded from update sets. To determine if a table is included, navigate to and view the Attribute value for the table in question. Only tables with the attribute update_sync=true are included in update sets.
You can optionally export and import data records via XML. However, to prevent unexpected data changes, Schedule Item [sys_trigger] records are not created for data records imported from an XML file such as an update set. To run scheduled jobs or scripts imported from another instance, update the corresponding job or script record in the target instance.