Recurring Tasks

Some work happens on a regular schedule — daily opening procedures, weekly inventory checks, monthly deep cleans. A recurring task lets you set the work up once and have FastQuery create a fresh task automatically on your chosen schedule.

A recurring task is really a schedule: a saved template plus a repeat pattern. FastQuery keeps that schedule for you and, each time it comes due, creates a brand-new task from the template. The generated tasks are ordinary tasks — your team works them exactly like any other.

The key idea: the schedule fires on the calendar, not on completion. A new task appears when the next occurrence is due whether or not the previous one was finished — so a forgotten checklist never blocks tomorrow’s from showing up. That’s the right behavior for opening routines, compliance walks, and cycle counts, where each day (or week, or month) is its own piece of work.

Finding Your Recurring Tasks

Open Recurring Tasks from the left sidebar (the ↻ repeat icon) in the web app. This screen lists every recurring schedule in your organization, so the whole team can see what runs automatically and when. Use the search box and the location filter to narrow a long list. Selecting a schedule opens it on the right, where you can edit its template, change the schedule, pause it, or end the series.

Recurring schedules are shared — everyone with task access sees them, unlike automations, which are private to whoever created them.

Setting Up a Recurring Task

There are three ways to create one:

• Add a schedule to a task. Create a task as you normally would (see Creating Tasks), then open its Schedule section and pick a repeat pattern. Saving the task registers the recurring schedule.
• Use the New Task button on the Recurring Tasks screen. It opens the same task form; add a schedule and save, and the new series appears in the list.
• Ask the AI assistant. Say something like “Every Monday at 7am, create an out-counts walk for Palo Alto.” The assistant builds the task and its schedule for you.

When you set the schedule you choose the repeat pattern:

• Daily — every day, or specific days of the week
• Weekly — once a week on a chosen day
• Monthly — once a month on a chosen date
• Custom — a cron-style schedule for anything more specific

Every schedule includes timezone support, so tasks fire at the right local time for the facility.

A recurring task can run at most twice a day — recurring tasks are for regular routines, not minute-by-minute reminders. If you enter a custom schedule that would fire more often, FastQuery flags it as too frequent so you can dial it back. (Need the AI to do something on a tighter cadence — say, hourly? That’s a job for an automation, not a recurring task.)

What Happens When a Recurring Task Fires

When the schedule comes due, FastQuery:

1. Creates a fresh task from the template — a clean copy with checklists reset (all items unchecked) and the same assignees. It simply appears in the assignees’ My Tasks list; a routine that fires on schedule doesn’t ping the same people every time, so no assignment notification is sent.
2. Handles the previous task if it’s still open. If the last task from this schedule was never finished, it’s marked Missed — a final state that’s neither completed nor deleted. The missed task stays visible in history and reporting, so you have an honest record of what didn’t get done, and its creator and assignees are notified.

Marking the old one Missed (rather than auto-completing it) is deliberate: it keeps the “one live task at a time” simplicity your team expects without pretending forgotten work was done.

The Auto-Pause Safety Valve

To prevent a dead routine from quietly piling up missed tasks forever, FastQuery watches for a streak. If a schedule produces 10 missed occurrences in a row — nobody finishes the task ten times running — the schedule pauses itself and notifies whoever created it.

This usually means the routine isn’t relevant anymore or needs to be reassigned. Auto-pause is fully reversible: resume the schedule with one tap (see below) and the miss streak resets. Nothing is deleted, and the schedule keeps all its settings.

Managing a Schedule

Select a schedule on the Recurring Tasks screen to manage it from the panel on the right:

• Edit the template — change the title, description, checklists, priority, assignees, or item blocks. Edits apply to future tasks the schedule creates; tasks already generated are untouched. You can also edit by voice or by asking the AI assistant, just like a normal task.
• Change the schedule — adjust the frequency, timing, or timezone.
• Enabled / Paused switch — flip a schedule off to temporarily stop new tasks, and back on to resume. Resuming re-bases the next run to the next future occurrence, so a long pause never backlog-fires a pile of catch-up tasks. (This switch saves immediately — pausing is a lifecycle action, not a draft edit.)
• End series — permanently stop the recurrence. Tasks already created stay as ordinary tasks; only the schedule ends.

The End Series button and the Enabled/Paused switch both live in the footer of the schedule editor shown above.

Rolling Out to Several Stores or People

A schedule can fan out so one setup produces separate tasks:

• Multiple stores — a rollout creates one task per store on each firing (for example, a weekend endcap reset every location runs on its own).
• A group of people — creates one task per assignee, so each person gets their own copy.

Item Blocks: Counts and Product Lists

A recurring task can carry the same count and product checklist blocks as a one-off task. Because stock is store-specific, FastQuery rebuilds each block fresh for the target store every time the task fires. A product checklist that starts empty is exactly what an out-counts walk needs — each occurrence begins as a blank list your team fills by scanning.

Editing the Series vs. a Single Task

Keep the distinction in mind:

• Editing the schedule (on the Recurring Tasks screen) changes the template for every future task — the recurrence, the checklist, the assignees.
• Editing one generated task (checking items off, adding a note) stays on that task and never changes the series.

Great Uses for Recurring Tasks

• Daily opening and closing checklists
• Weekly inventory audits and cycle counts
• Weekly out-counts walks
• Monthly safety inspections or deep cleans
• Multi-store rollouts that each location runs on the same cadence