Order Schedules

Save a draft as a recurring template and have chrt generate orders automatically.

An order schedule is a saved draft (the “manifest”) paired with a recurrence rule. chrt generates a new draft order automatically each time the schedule fires — daily, weekly, on specific weekdays, or any cadence you can express as a cron-style rule. Use schedules for recurring routes (a 6 AM lab run, a weekly distribution lane) so you don’t rebuild the same draft over and over.

Before you start

  • You need a draft order that represents one “instance” of the recurring shipment. The schedule reuses this as a manifest each time it generates a new order.
  • Once a schedule is active, its name, description, and manifest are locked. To change them, archive the schedule and create a new one — or pause it first if it’s only temporarily wrong.

1. Open Order schedules

Open chrt.com/orders/schedules. The page lists all schedules in your org with their status, next-run timestamp, and quick actions.

Use the Calendar view for a visual layout of upcoming runs across schedules.

2. Create a new schedule

  1. Click New scheduled order to open the schedule editor sheet.
  2. Enter a name and an optional description.
  3. Pick the template draft that will be used as the manifest. If you opened the editor from an existing draft, the template is pre-selected and locked.
  4. Configure the recurrence rule — frequency (daily, weekly, monthly), interval, weekday selection, and timezone. chrt auto-defaults the timezone to the first task location’s timezone when a manifest is present; you can override it.
  5. Assign task groups to the schedule (if your manifest has multiple).

Click Validate manifest to confirm the draft has everything it needs to generate real orders. The validator returns a checklist of requirements — for example, “no coordinator assigned” or “tasks missing coordinates.” Fix any failures in the underlying draft before activating.

3. Activate the schedule

A new schedule starts in Draft status — no orders are generated until you activate it.

  1. Open the schedule’s actions menu and click Activate.
  2. chrt re-runs validation, registers the schedule with the orchestrator, and moves the status to Active.

Once active, chrt generates a new draft order each time the recurrence fires. Generated orders carry provenance fields so you can trace them back to the schedule from the order page.

4. Manage active schedules

The actions menu shows the relevant options based on the schedule’s current state:

ActionAvailable whenWhat it does
UnpausePausedResume generating orders on the recurrence.
PauseActiveStop generating orders without archiving. Reversible.
ActivateDraftValidate the manifest and start generating orders.
EditDraft onlyOpen the editor sheet to change the schedule.
Take ownershipOwned by someone elseTransfer the schedule to your user.
Trigger nowActiveGenerate one order immediately, without affecting future runs.
ArchiveAnyPermanently stop the schedule. Cannot be undone.

Archiving is irreversible. If you’re not sure whether you want to stop the schedule permanently, Pause it first — you can always unpause later.

5. Find orders generated by a schedule

Generated orders appear in Orders like any other order. The order detail page links back to the originating schedule. From the schedule’s detail page, you can see the count of generated orders and the live orchestrator status.

How to know it worked

  • The schedule’s status is Active.
  • The Next run column shows a future timestamp.
  • A draft order appears in Orders at each scheduled run, with a link back to the schedule.

If something looks different

  • Activate fails with validation errors — open the source draft, fix the missing fields, and try again. Common gaps: no addresses on stops, no cargo selected at a stop, no assigned coordinator org.
  • Schedule is active but no orders appear — confirm the next-run timestamp has actually passed. If your recurrence runs on a specific weekday or hour, the next run may be days away.
  • You can’t edit a schedule that’s clearly wrong — only Draft schedules can be edited. Pause the schedule, archive it, and create a fresh one if the manifest needs to change.
  • A schedule belongs to a teammate who’s left — use Take ownership to transfer it to yourself.
  • Contact hi@chrt.com if you have issues.