How can I write a custom schedule?

Custom schedules in Domino are created using the quartz cron scheduler.  A full tutorial for the quartz scheduler is located here.  As in the screenshot below, you will need to write the full cron expression in the custom field.

General Form

The general form of the quartz-cron expression is...

1. Seconds
2. Minutes
3. Hours 
4. Day-of-Month
5. Month
6. Day-of-Week
7. Year (optional field)

This equates to an expression in the following format...

* * * * * * *
| | | | | | | 
| | | | | | +-- Year              (range: 1970-2099)
| | | | | +---- Day of the Week   (range: 1-7 or SUN-SAT)
| | | | +------ Month of the Year (range: 0-11 or JAN-DEC)
| | | +-------- Day of the Month  (range: 1-31)
| | +---------- Hour              (range: 0-23)
| +------------ Minute            (range: 0-59)
+-------------- Second            (range: 0-59)

Note: The year field is optional as it's infrequently used and can be left off entirely.

Special character meanings

Field Name      Mandatory   Allowed Values      Allowed Special Characters
Seconds         YES         0-59                , - * /
Minutes         YES         0-59                , - * /
Hours           YES         0-23                , - * /
Day of month    YES         1-31                , - * ? / L W   //allowed '?'
Month           YES         1-12 or JAN-DEC     , - * /
Day of week     YES         1-7 or SUN-SAT      , - * ? / L #   //allowed '?'
Year            NO          empty, 1970-2099    , - * /

*all values

• used to select all values within a field. For example, “” in the minute field means *“every minute”.

?no specific value

• useful when you need to specify something in one of the two fields in which the character is allowed, but not the other. For example, if I want my trigger to fire on a particular day of the month (say, the 10th), but don’t care what day of the week that happens to be, I would put “10” in the day-of-month field, and “?” in the day-of-week field.  Note: it is mandatory to use a ? in one of the two fields, Day of Month or Day of Week 

/ increment

• used to specify increments. For example, “0/15” in the seconds field means “the seconds 0, 15, 30, and 45”. And “5/15” in the seconds field means “the seconds 5, 20, 35, and 50”. You can also specify ‘/’ after the ‘’ character - in this case ‘’ is equivalent to having ‘0’ before the ‘/’. ‘1/3’ in the day-of-month field means “fire every 3 days starting on the first day of the month”.

LLast

• The ‘L’ character is allowed for the day-of-month and day-of-week fields. This character is short-hand for “last”, but it has different meaning in each of the two fields. For example, the value “L” in the day-of-month field means “the last day of the month” - day 31 for January, day 28 for February on non-leap years. If used in the day-of-week field by itself, it simply means “7” or “SAT”. But if used in the day-of-week field after another value, it means “the last xxx day of the month” - for example “6L” or “FRIL” both mean “the last friday of the month”. You can also specify an offset from the last day of the month, such as “L-3” which would mean the third-to-last day of the calendar month. When using the ‘L’ option, it is important not to specify lists, or ranges of values, as you’ll get confusing/unexpected results.

WNearest Weekday

• The ‘W’ is used to specify the weekday (Monday-Friday) nearest the given day. As an example, if you were to specify “15W” as the value for the day-of-month field, the meaning is: “the nearest weekday to the 15th of the month”.

#Nth weekday of the month

• The ‘#’ is used to specify “the nth” XXX weekday of the month. For example, the value of “6#3” or “FRI#3” in the day-of-week field means “the third Friday of the month”.

Example Cron Expressions

CronTrigger Example 1 - an expression to create a trigger that simply fires every 5 minutes

“0 0/5 * * * ?”

CronTrigger Example 2 - an expression to create a trigger that fires every 5 minutes, at 10 seconds after the minute (i.e. 10:00:10 am, 10:05:10 am, etc.).

“10 0/5 * * * ?”

CronTrigger Example 3 - an expression to create a trigger that fires at 10:30, 11:30, 12:30, and 13:30, on every Wednesday and Friday.

“0 30 10-13 ? * WED,FRI”

CronTrigger Example 4 - an expression to create a trigger that fires every half hour between the hours of 8 am and 10 am on the 5th and 20th of every month. Note that the trigger will NOT fire at 10:00 am, just at 8:00, 8:30, 9:00 and 9:30

“0 0/30 8-9 5,20 * ?”

Note that some scheduling requirements are too complicated to express with a single trigger - such as “every 5 minutes between 9:00 am and 10:00 am, and every 20 minutes between 1:00 pm and 10:00 pm”. The solution in this scenario is to simply create two triggers, and register both of them to run the same job.