Scheduling
The Schedule screen controls how often the Datafeed App refreshes your data. Products and stock are scheduled independently because they change at different rates — your catalogue is fairly stable, but stock levels change throughout the day.
The schedule screen at a glance
The Schedule screen has three main controls:
- A master Scheduled sync toggle at the top.
- A Products card with an interval and live status.
- A Stock card with an interval and live status.
A Run Now button in the corner triggers an immediate sync of both data types without waiting for the schedule.
Choosing intervals
Both Products and Stock are scheduled in minutes.
| Data type | Minimum | Maximum | Suggested |
|---|---|---|---|
| Products | 60 minutes | 1440 minutes (24 hours) | Daily, or every few hours. The catalogue changes slowly. |
| Stock | 10 minutes | 1440 minutes (24 hours) | Every 15 to 30 minutes. Use a shorter interval if you have a fast-moving range. |
The interval inputs are constrained to the ranges shown in the table. If you type a value outside the range, the Save button is disabled and an inline validation error appears until you correct it.
:::tip Don't over-poll Frequent syncing rarely improves accuracy because stock levels are themselves updated on a cycle. Polling every minute is wasteful and may trigger rate-limit warnings on the API side. Most customers settle on 15–30 minutes for stock and daily for products. :::
The "Scheduled sync" master switch
The Scheduled sync toggle at the top of the screen lets you pause all automatic syncing at once. Use it when you want to:
- Stop the app temporarily while doing maintenance on your downstream system.
- Test a manual sync before going live.
When the toggle is off, scheduled syncs do not run. The Run Now button still works, so you can sync on demand whenever you need to.
What the live status tells you
Each card (Products and Stock) shows three live values:
- Next run at — the next time a sync is scheduled.
- Last run at — the most recent time a sync completed.
- Last outcome — colour-coded:
- Green / Success — the most recent sync wrote a CSV successfully.
- Red / Failure — the most recent sync failed. Hover over the label to see a short error description, or check the logs for the full reason.
After the very first install, all three values will read "—" until you trigger your first sync.
Triggering an immediate sync
To run a sync right now — for example, when you've just finished setting up the app and want to verify everything works — click Run Now. The button shows a spinner while the run is in progress; CSV files appear in your output folder within thirty seconds for a typical-sized catalogue.
Manual runs do not reset the schedule. If your interval is set to 15 minutes and you click Run Now at 10:05, the next scheduled run still happens at the originally calculated time.
How it actually works
Behind the scenes, the background service checks the clock every thirty seconds. On each check, it independently decides whether the Products sync or the Stock sync is due, and runs whichever needs to run. There's no need to time anything to the second — the next sync will happen as soon as it's due.
Next: keep an eye on the service
Continue to Running the service for how to start, stop, and check the health of the background service.