---
title: Schedule, Pause, and Cancel Agent Actions
description: Create governed one-time or recurring agent work, verify UTC timing and delivery scope, and stop future runs safely.
audience:
  - group_admin
product_area: operations
topics:
  - Scheduled actions
  - Agent automation
  - Cron
  - Governance
synonyms:
  - admin
  - administrator
  - owner
  - creator
  - scheduled agent
  - recurring automation
routes:
  - /groups/:groupId/agent-actions
related_articles:
  - admins/ai-tutor-practice-and-channels
  - admins/retention-and-win-back
  - admins/appearance-plugins-api-and-mcp
  - admins/launch-checklist-and-troubleshooting
status: published
---

Open **Agent actions** with an owner/admin account to schedule governed work for the current community. A schedule is authorization for future runs; review the prompt, persona, timing, tools, data access, and delivery effect before creating it.

![The Creator Console overview used to confirm the community and operational context before scheduling agent work.](/help/images/admins/creator-console.png "Confirm the community, policy, and responsible owner before authorizing future agent runs.")

## Create the smallest safe action

1. Give the action a specific title and optional operational description.
2. Choose the persona whose approved role matches the task.
3. Write a bounded prompt with the expected input, output, audience, stop condition, and facts that must be verified.
4. Choose **One time** for a defined future run or **Recurring** for a reviewed cron schedule.
5. Confirm the displayed time. The current operator form stores schedules in **UTC**.
6. Review the destination. The current form creates a community-scoped action with **group post** delivery.
7. Create the action only after a named owner has approved the schedule and knows how to stop it.

Start with a one-time action or a low-frequency recurring action. Do not include passwords, tokens, payment data, private member memory, or unrestricted instructions. If the persona can use write tools, confirm the applicable approval and idempotency controls.

## Understand status and timing

- **Scheduled** — eligible to fire at the next-run time.
- **Paused** — future firing is suspended.
- **Completed** — a one-time action ran, or the recurring schedule is exhausted.
- **Cancelled** — an operator permanently stopped the action and supplied a reason.
- **Failed** — retries were exhausted and manual review is required.

Each row can show the persona, prompt preview, trigger type, next run, last run, and run count. A timestamp or count is operational evidence, not proof that every intended external effect succeeded.

## Pause, resume, or cancel

Pause a scheduled action when its source data, policy, persona, destination, or responsible owner is changing. Before resuming, reread the prompt and confirm the recomputed next-run time.

Cancel when the action is obsolete, unsafe, duplicated, or should never run again. Enter a factual reason that another reviewer can understand. Cancellation stops future scheduling; it does not undo posts, messages, payments, files, or other effects from completed runs.

There is no safe reason to click pause, resume, or cancel repeatedly while a request is pending. Refresh once and verify the displayed status before trying again.

## Review and troubleshoot

Regularly review:

- upcoming run time and UTC-to-local conversion;
- last-run time and unexpected run-count changes;
- failed or permanently failed actions;
- duplicate schedules that target the same audience or record;
- changes to the persona, tools, channel, community policy, or source content; and
- whether the named owner is still responsible.

If a run is late, missing, or surprising, record the action identifier, community, status, trigger type, expected/actual UTC time, last-run time, run count, and a redacted screenshot. Check whether the action was paused, cancelled, completed, rate-limited, awaiting approval, or blocked by a provider/channel policy before creating a replacement.

Do not create a duplicate schedule to test the scheduler in production. Use approved test content and a one-time run, then remove or cancel the test action when verification is complete.

## Legal

- [Privacy](/privacy)
- [Terms](/terms)
- [Data rights and deletion](/data-deletion)