Schedules

Overview

Schedules allow your organization to manage reusable, flexible date-related information that can be attached to recurring or specific-date items. This ensures consistent scheduling across modules while providing advanced capabilities such as weekly, annual, or deadline-specific recurrence patterns for tasks, reviews, and compliance activities.

Common examples include Weekly Risk Reviews (recurring every Monday), Annual Policy Review (recurring every January 15th), and Quarterly Audit Deadline (recurring on the last day of each quarter).

Core Functionality

We provide a central place to define and manage reusable schedules, ensuring consistency and automation across your organization. Schedules can be attached to any object requiring recurring checks or deadlines, such as policies, risks, or audits.

Our interface includes a Pattern Builder that allows you to create recurrence rules interactively without needing to manually understand the RFC 5545 specification. You can configure frequency, interval, count, days of the week, days of the month, hours, minutes, months, week start, and start/end dates — covering all common scheduling needs.

Schedules can be applied across modules to automate recurring reviews, deadlines, and operational checks, ensuring a clear overview of responsibilities and due dates. Changes to schedules are instantaneous and tracked with an audit log for compliance and accountability.

Fields Explained

Export and Import

Schedules can be exported and imported from the platform. An export will provide a CSV with all fields, including related metadata. The import does not require all fields. The following is an example of a minimal CSV file:

slug,name,ruleSet
annual-policy-review,Annual Policy Review,FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=1;BYMONTHDAY=15
weekly-risk-review,Weekly Risk Review,FREQ=WEEKLY;BYDAY=MO
quarterly-audit-deadline,Quarterly Audit Deadline,FREQ=MONTHLY;INTERVAL=3;BYMONTHDAY=-1

Best Practices

• Use clear and descriptive names so each schedule’s purpose is immediately understood.
• Define RFC 5545 rules carefully to reflect the exact recurrence required (e.g., “every Monday” or “15th of January annually”).
• Reuse schedules across multiple items to ensure consistent workflows.
• Review and update schedules periodically to align with organizational or regulatory requirements.
• Use schedules together with reminders and escalations to automate tracking of compliance deadlines and recurring reviews.

For example, you might use the rule FREQ=WEEKLY;BYDAY=MO for Weekly Risk Reviews, ensuring the task recurs every Monday, or FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=1;BYMONTHDAY=15 for Annual Policy Reviews on January 15th each year.

Our platform ensures that when schedules are used, they provide consistent, clear, and flexible recurrence and deadline management, supporting operational excellence and compliance across your organization.

RFC 5545 Standard

Schedules in devguard are based on the RFC 5545 iCalendar standard, the widely adopted format for defining recurring events. This ensures interoperability with calendaring tools such as Google Calendar, Outlook, and Apple Calendar, while providing advanced flexibility for defining precise recurrence patterns.

The Pattern Builder allows you to configure schedules interactively, but you can also define custom RFC 5545 rules directly for complex use cases.

RFC 5545 Quick Reference

• FREQ=DAILY — Daily recurrence
• FREQ=WEEKLY;BYDAY=MO,FR — Every Monday and Friday
• FREQ=MONTHLY;BYMONTHDAY=15 — On the 15th of each month
• INTERVAL=2 — Every 2nd occurrence
• COUNT=10 — Limit to 10 occurrences
• WKST=MO — Start the week on Monday
• DTSTART=20241231T235959Z — Set a start date/time
• UNTIL=20241231T235959Z — End by a specific date/time

By aligning with RFC 5545, your schedules remain flexible, standards-compliant, and fully interoperable across internal workflows and external calendar systems.