How to Schedule a Flow with Celigo CLI

The flow now has a Salesforce export as its source and a Google Sheets import as its destination, and it runs when you invoke it with celigo flows run. The next step is to make it run on its own. This post adds a recurring schedule. Every Monday at 8:05 AM Eastern, the flow pulls accounts from Salesforce and appends them to the sheet. If you haven’t built the import yet, start with How to Create a Google Sheets Import with Celigo CLI.

TL;DR

Celigo CLI schedules use 6-field cron in the form "? minute hour dayOfMonth month dayOfWeek", with ? always in the leading position. Pair schedule with an IANA timezone. To change nothing but the schedule, use celigo flows set <YOUR_FLOW_ID> schedule="? 5 8 ? * 1" timezone=America/New_York. To keep scheduling in the definition file, add the two fields to the flow JSON and push it with celigo flows update <YOUR_FLOW_ID> --file celigo-cli-demo-only-salesforce-accounts-to-google-sheets.json. set touches only the fields you name, while update --file replaces the whole flow, so the file must mirror the server’s current state first.

The Schedule Expression

Celigo uses a 6-field cron format with seconds in the first position. The first position is ?. Unlike the 5-field cron used by most Linux systems, the first position is seconds, and Celigo always leaves it as ?.

Position	Value	Meaning
seconds	?	always ?
minutes	5	minute 5
hours	8	hour 8, 8 AM
day of month	?	unused
month	*	every month
day of week	1	Monday

* matches every value in its position. Day of week 1 is Monday.

Reading "? 5 8 ? * 1" position by position gives minute 5, hour 8, any month, Monday. The day-of-month position is ? because a Celigo cron cannot set day of month and day of week at the same time, so the unused position must be ?. The flow runs at 8:05 AM on Mondays.

NOTE: Keep the leading ?. A 5-field expression like "5 8 * * 1" omits the seconds position and fails with Invalid cron expression.

The schedule resolves in the flow’s timezone. Set it to an IANA name such as America/New_York. Celigo does not shift cron schedules for daylight saving time automatically. A run scheduled inside the 1:00 to 3:00 AM window on a changeover day can be skipped or fire twice. 8:05 AM sits well outside that window, so the Monday runs keep their wall-clock time.

Without timezone set, the API defaults to UTC, while the integrator.io UI falls back to the account owner’s profile timezone. An explicit IANA name removes the ambiguity.

Setting the Schedule with the set Command

celigo flows set changes specific fields on the live flow. Add the schedule and timezone in a single command.

celigo flows set <YOUR_FLOW_ID> schedule="? 5 8 ? * 1" timezone=America/New_York

The quotes are required. Both * and ? are glob characters. Unquoted, the shell expands them against files in the current directory before celigo ever sees the value.

set works on individual key=value assignments rather than a full document. The CLI writes the flow back in place, but how it does so depends on the field. Fields like name, disabled, and schedule.cron sit on the atomic patch whitelist, so they are applied with a single PATCH that touches only what you named. A cron-string schedule (the bare key) and timezone sit outside that whitelist, so they take the retrieve-merge-write path instead. The CLI reads the flow, applies the assignments, and writes the whole flow back. Either way, every field you did not name is carried through untouched. The command does not look at the definition file and does not care whether it is in sync with the server.

Adding the Schedule to the Definition File

If the flow definition file is the artifact you review and deploy, keep the schedule there. Open the flow definition.

vim celigo-cli-demo-only-salesforce-accounts-to-google-sheets.json

Add schedule and timezone alongside the existing fields. The cron string goes through unchanged, and only the quotes differ from the shell form.

{
  "_id": "<YOUR_FLOW_ID>",
  "_integrationId": "<YOUR_INTEGRATION_ID>",
  "name": "Salesforce Accounts to Google Sheets",
  "description": "For https://rjleyva.com Celigo CLI demonstration only.",
  "disabled": true,
  "schedule": "? 5 8 ? * 1",
  "timezone": "America/New_York",
  "pageGenerators": [
    {
      "_exportId": "<YOUR_EXPORT_ID>"
    }
  ],
  "pageProcessors": [
    {
      "type": "import",
      "_importId": "<YOUR_IMPORT_ID>"
    }
  ]
}

Push the file.

celigo flows update <YOUR_FLOW_ID> --file celigo-cli-demo-only-salesforce-accounts-to-google-sheets.json

update does not merge the file with the live flow. It replaces the flow body with the file body. Anything the server has that the file omits is dropped.

That matters here. The running flow carries fields the hand-written file does not, including autoResolveMatchingTraceKeys set to true, logging set to account level, the page generator’s skipRetries, and the page processor’s responseMapping. The file also says disabled: true while the flow is currently enabled. Pushing the file as-is resets all of those.

Check the current state before a file-based push, and bring the file up to it.

celigo flows get <YOUR_FLOW_ID>

Copy the fields the server returns that the file lacks, set disabled to its real value, and only then push. The file must be the flow’s complete, current description, plus the schedule you are adding.

Choosing Between set and update

Aspect	celigo flows set	celigo flows update –file
What gets sent	only the assigned fields	the entire file body
Fields you don’t name	preserved	dropped if absent from the file
Needs a synced file	no	yes
Source of truth	the live flow	the definition file
Best for	schedule, timezone, disabled	full flow definitions you review

For adding a schedule to a flow that is already running, set is the minimal change, since it cannot disturb anything else. update --file is the right tool when the definition file is the artifact you maintain, which is the pattern this series has followed all along. The schedule itself is identical either way. What differs is how much of the flow you commit to the server along with it.

Verifying the Schedule

Confirm the schedule is on the flow.

celigo flows get <YOUR_FLOW_ID>

The response now includes schedule and timezone. The output below is trimmed to the fields that changed or matter for this post.

{
  "_id": "<YOUR_FLOW_ID>",
  "name": "Salesforce Accounts to Google Sheets",
  "description": "For https://rjleyva.com Celigo CLI demonstration only.",
  "disabled": false,
  "schedule": "? 5 8 ? * 1",
  "timezone": "America/New_York",
  "pageGenerators": [
    {
      "_exportId": "<YOUR_EXPORT_ID>",
      "skipRetries": false
    }
  ],
  "pageProcessors": [
    {
      "type": "import",
      "_importId": "<YOUR_IMPORT_ID>",
      "responseMapping": {
        "fields": [],
        "lists": []
      }
    }
  ],
  "autoResolveMatchingTraceKeys": true,
  "logging": {
    "mode": "accountLevel"
  }
}

The flow is scheduled to run every Monday at 8:05 AM Eastern. It pulls the Salesforce accounts and appends them to the sheet without any manual intervention. You can still trigger the flow on demand with celigo flows run. The schedule is an additional trigger, not a replacement for manual runs.

In the next post, How to Track a Celigo CLI Integration with Git we’ll put the Celigo definition files under Git so integration changes can be tracked, reviewed, and reproduced.