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Schedule Deployments using Triggers

You can trigger Harness Workflow and Pipeline deployments on a time schedule. You can select how often to execute the Trigger by hour, days, etc.

All the cron jobs are executed in Universal Time Coordinated (UTC). You can also apply the time condition to new artifacts only.

Before You Begin​

note

On Time Schedule Triggers must be equal to or greater than 5 minutes. This includes CRON expressions. If the CRON expression uses a schedule less than 5 minutes, you will see a warning such as:
Deployments must be triggered at intervals greater than or equal to 5 minutes.

Step 1: Add a Trigger​

Typically, Triggers are set up after you have successfully deployed and tested a Workflow or Pipeline.

To add a trigger, do the following:

  1. Ensure that you have a Harness Service, Environment, and Workflow set up. If you want to Trigger a Pipeline, you'll need one set up also.
  2. In your Harness Application, click Triggers.
  3. Click Add Trigger. The Trigger settings appear.
  4. In Name, enter a name for the Trigger. This name will appear in the Deployments page to indicate the Trigger that initiated a deployment.
  5. Click Next.

Step 2: Schedule Trigger Execution​

You set the schedule for the Trigger using a quartz expression. The Harness Manager uses the schedule you set to execute the Trigger. The Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) time zone is used.

  1. In Condition, select On Time Schedule.
  2. In Trigger Every, select the schedule.
  3. Click Next.

If you select Custom CRON Expression, the time format must be a cron quartz expression.

Harness implicitly adds a prefix for seconds so it does not have to be specified explicitly.

For example, to execute the Trigger every 12 hours, the quartz expression would be 0 0 0/12 ? * * *, but you would enter 0 0/12 ? * * * because Harness adds the 0 prefix.

Let's look at another example. If you want to invoke a trigger at a certain time, say at 03:10 at 4 day at February month at 2022 year UTC, then you can provide custom CRON expression as 10 3 4 FEB ? 2022.

Harness does not support seconds-level granularity in cron expressions when firing Triggers.For a quartz expression calculator and examples, see  Cron Expression Generator & Explainer.

Option: On New Artifact Only​

If you want the scheduled Trigger to execute with a new artifact, select On New Artifact Only.

If you enable this setting, the Trigger will continue to be executed on schedule, and it will use the last artifact collected when it runs.

There must be at least one successful deployment with the specific artifact for it to be qualified as the new artifact for the Trigger. Then, Harness checks every new artifact against the last deployed artifact.

If the last artifact failed to deploy, Harness will use the last successfully deployed artifact.

Artifact metadata is collected automatically every minute by Harness.

You can also manually collect artifact metadata using the Service's Manually pull artifact feature.

Step 3: Select the Workflow or Pipeline to Deploy​

  1. In Execution Type, select Workflow or Pipeline.
  2. In Execute Workflow/Pipeline, select the Workflow or Pipeline to deploy.

Step 4: Provide Values for Workflow Variables​

If the Workflow or Pipeline you selected to deploy uses Workflow variables, you will need to provide values for these variables.

You can also use variable expressions for these values. See Passing Variables into Workflows from Triggers.

Step 5: Select the Artifact to Deploy​

Since Workflows deploy Harness Services, you are also prompted to provide the Artifact Source for the Service(s) the Workflow(s) will deploy.

Last Collected​

Select this option to use the last artifact collected by Harness in the Harness Service. Artifact metadata is collected automatically every minute by Harness.

You can also manually collect artifact metadata using the Service's Manually pull artifact feature.

Last Successfully Deployed​

The last artifact that was deployed by the Workflow you select.

Configure As Code​

To see how to configure the settings in this topic using YAML, configure the settings in the UI first, and then click the YAML editor button.