Scheduling

When you create a campaign, the schedule step asks two questions: how often (one-time or recurring) and when (send now, at a specific time, or at each recipient’s local time). This page covers every combination.

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One-Time vs. Recurring

The schedule step opens with a toggle between two modes:

• One-time — Send the campaign once. Choose from immediate, scheduled, or local-time delivery.
• Recurring — Send the campaign on a repeating schedule. Serval automatically creates a new run each time the schedule fires.

Pick one-time for announcements, event logistics, or any message that only needs to go out once. Pick recurring for periodic check-ins, pulse surveys, or any communication you want to repeat on a cadence.

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One-Time Schedules

One-time campaigns support three delivery modes.

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Immediate

Messages are sent as soon as you run the campaign. Serval begins delivering to all recipients right away. Best for: Urgent announcements, time-sensitive updates, or situations where delivery timing doesn’t matter.

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Scheduled

Pick a specific date, time, and timezone. All recipients receive the message at the same moment. Best for: Coordinated announcements tied to a specific moment, such as a product launch, a policy effective date, or a scheduled maintenance window.

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Local Time

Pick a wall-clock time, and each recipient receives the message at that time in their own timezone. Serval groups recipients into timezone batches and delivers each batch at the appropriate time. Between batches, the campaign status shows Waiting for next batch. Best for: Messages that should arrive during business hours for each recipient, such as a benefits enrollment reminder or an IT survey.

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Recurring Schedules

Recurring campaigns repeat on a cron-based schedule. When you select Recurring, you configure three things: frequency, delivery mode, and whether to run immediately on activation.

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Frequency

Choose how often the campaign fires: For day-of-week, day-of-month, and month frequencies you also pick a time of day and timezone for delivery.

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Delivery mode

For fixed-time frequencies (day of week, day of month, months), you choose how the time is interpreted:

• Specific timezone — Everyone receives the message at the same moment, using the timezone you selected.
• Local time — Each recipient receives the message at the chosen time in their own timezone, the same way one-time local scheduling works.

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Run immediately

When you activate a recurring campaign, you can choose whether to fire the first run right away or wait for the next regular cycle:

• Run immediately (default) — The first run starts as soon as you activate the series. For local-time delivery, recipients whose local time has already passed that day receive the message right away.
• Wait for next cycle — The series waits until the next scheduled fire time before sending the first run.

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Upcoming sends preview

The schedule step shows a preview of the next several upcoming send times so you can verify the cadence is correct before activating.

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Runs

Each time a recurring schedule fires, Serval creates a new run that goes through its own send lifecycle. You can view all runs from the parent campaign’s Runs tab and drill into any individual run to see its delivery and response data.

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Choosing a Schedule

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