Scheduling vs. Publishing
What you'll learn
- The difference between putting a date on a piece and queueing a send.
- What Scheduled At and Published At actually do.
- How to queue a send that goes out on its own, and how to watch, cancel, or recover it.
Two different acts
Most of the confusion here comes from treating two acts as one. They are separate:
- A date on a piece is a plan. It puts the piece on the calendar so you can see your pipeline and balance the week. On its own it sends nothing anywhere.
- A queued send is a real instruction. It carries a time and a destination and it sits in a queue. A runner inside your workspace checks that queue every minute and sends it at its time, with nobody watching.
Setting Scheduled At to next Tuesday says "this is meant to go out Tuesday." Queueing a send says "send this on Tuesday." The first is a note to yourself. The second happens whether or not you are at your desk.
The two date fields
A piece of content carries two timestamps, and neither one sends anything by itself:
- Scheduled At is when you intend it to go out. The calendar plots the piece on that day, and you can drag it to another day to change the plan. It is also the time the Publishing tab uses when you queue a send.
- Published At is when it actually went live. Set it yourself when you are recording work that already shipped, and the calendar plots the piece as history.
How to queue a send
- On the piece's General tab, set Scheduled At and save. That is the time the send will use, so pick a future one: a time already in the past is treated as missed rather than sent late.
- Open the Publishing tab and select the channels you want.
- Press Schedule pending. Tick Include CMS push first if the piece also goes to your CMS.
Each destination becomes its own queued send, with its own result and its own retries. They all appear under Scheduled & recent dispatches on the same tab, so what is waiting is never a mystery.
What happens when the time arrives
The runner picks the send up on its next pass and it goes out unattended. A few behaviours are worth knowing:
- The piece is read at send time, not at queue time. Edit it after queueing and the version that goes out is the version as it stands when the send fires. Nothing is frozen at the moment you pressed the button.
- A failure retries itself. A send that fails waits and tries again, backing off further each time. Only when its attempts run out does it settle as failed, with the reason shown on its row.
- A badly late send is not sent. If a queued send sits more than fifteen minutes past its time without ever being attempted, it is marked missed and does not fire. That is deliberate: a slot that has gone stale should not surprise your audience hours later. The row stays visible so you can send it now or drop it.
- Going early is safe. If you publish a channel yourself before its queued send comes due, the queued send skips that channel rather than posting it twice.
Changing your mind
A queued send's time is fixed once it is queued. Moving the piece on the calendar, or editing Scheduled At, changes the plan and not the send already waiting. To move a queued send, cancel it on its row and queue a new one. Anything queued, missed, or failed can be cancelled.
Publishing right now
You never have to queue. On the Publishing tab, Publish on a channel sends it immediately, and Publish all pending sends every selected channel that is ready. For your CMS, Push to CMS and Update in CMS do the same. See Publishing to Facebook & Instagram and Pushing to Your CMS.
Common variations
Recording a past publish date. If something went live elsewhere and you are backfilling, set Published At to the real date so the calendar reflects history. Setting the date re-sends nothing.
Status and dates are separate. A piece's status is its own field. m18t does not force a date and a status to agree, and moving a piece into a "live" status sends nothing. A send happens because it was queued, or because you pressed publish.
FAQ
Will m18t publish my content automatically when the scheduled time arrives? Yes, if you queued a send for that time. Setting Scheduled At on its own will not, because a date is a plan. Queue the send from the Publishing tab and it goes out on its own.
What's the difference between Scheduled At and Published At? Scheduled At is your intended time, used by the calendar and by the Publishing tab when you queue a send. Published At records when the piece actually went live. Neither field sends anything by itself.
If I set the status to a "live" status, does it go live? No. Status is a label and an ordering, not an instruction to send. See The Status Set. A send comes from the Publishing tab, queued for a time or done immediately.
Does my browser need to be open for a queued send to fire? No. The runner works on a clock inside your workspace, so a queued send goes out whether or not you are signed in.
What happens if a queued send is late? Fifteen minutes past its time, a send that was never attempted is marked missed instead of firing, and it waits for your decision. A send that was attempted and failed is a different case: that one keeps retrying on its own.
Why doesn't my piece show on the calendar? The calendar plots items by their date fields. A piece with neither Scheduled At nor Published At will not appear under those date sources. See The Calendar View.
Can I publish to two destinations at once? Each destination is its own send, queued or immediate. "Publish all pending" covers the social channels you selected, and a CMS push is its own action.