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KnowledgeSync Tips & Tricks

Event Scheduling Tips: First Monday, Second Thursday, Etc.

Have you ever wanted to schedule a KnowledgeSync event to run on the first Monday of every month? How about the third Thursday of every month? Or, have you wondered how to create a single event that runs every weekday at 9 AM and reports on the activity from the preceding workday -- but you can't figure out how to get Monday's run to report on last Friday's activity?

If any of these situations has ever stumped you, you're not alone.

With a little ingenuity -- and a little clever use of query filters, you can create events that run under those kinds of schedules. The "trick" is the that you'll actually configure the event to run weekly, but you'll use the event's query "Filters" to further restrict exactly which day the event will run on.

Here's how you'd do it:

1. An event that runs on the first Monday of every month.

Step #1: Schedule the event to run weekly, every Monday.

Step #2: Add a filter to the event's query. The column to be filtered on is {%Current Day}, the operator is "less than or equal to", and the compare value is '7'.

Since the "first" Monday of a month HAS to fall somewhere between the 1st of the month and the 7th of a month, the process of checking the "day number" to see if it is less than or equal to '7' ensures that any event that uses this query will run only on the first Monday of a month.

2. An event that runs on the second Thursday of every month.

Step #1: Schedule the event to run weekly, every Thursday.

Step #2: Add two filters to the event's query. The column to be filtered on for both of these filters is {%Current Day%}. The operator for the first of these filters is "greater than or equal to" and its compare value is '8'.

The operator for the second of these filters is "less than or equal to" and its compare value is '14'.

Since the "second" Thursday of a month HAS to fall somewhere between the 8th of the month and the 14th of a month, the process of checking the "day number" to see if it is between '8' and '14' ensures that any event that uses this query will run only on the second Thursday of a month.

3. An event that runs daily at 9 AM, Monday through Friday and always reports on the data from the preceding day -- except for when it runs on Mondays, when it should report on the data from the preceding Friday.

You might be tempted to assume that a scenario like this requires two events. One event would run on Tuesdays through Fridays and report on the activity from the preceding day ("{%Yesterday Date%}") and the other event would run just on Mondays and report on the activity from last Friday ("{%Last Friday Date%}").

In reality, you can do this all in a single event.

All you need to do is to go to this query and edit the filter that performs the date comparison. Instead of choosing "yesterday's date" or "last Friday's date" as the compare value, choose the date variable called "{%Last Date/Time Event Checked%}". (This is just a short scroll down from the top of the list of date variables.)

Now consider how the event will work:

On Tuesdays through Friday at 9 AM, the event will capture all of the activity since the last time the event ran -- which would be the preceding day at 9 AM. On Mondays, the event will realize that the last time it ran was the preceding Friday at 9 AM, and therefore the event will capture all of the activity since that date.

Pretty simple, eh?

Just be aware of one important thing -- if you choose to either "schedule" or "test" this event, you will update the "last date/time event checked" value with the date/time that you scheduled or tested the event. So -- if you are going to configure events in this fashion, you might want to have one "production" version of this event and a second "test/development" version so you can be sure that the "last date/time event checked" value of your production event is updated only when the event is submitted by KnowledgeSync.

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