Schedules
Schedules can be configured to automatically control arming / disarming, floodlights and infrared floodlights.
Overview
Schedules are created on the Settings -> Schedules page:
Schedules are created 'globally' and then assigned to individual devices:
If the team is part of a reseller account, schedules can also be inherited from the parent team. Inherited schedules are 'read only' and can only be edited from the parent team.
Creating a schedule
To create a new schedule, click on Create Schedule on the Schedules page.
Simply click or drag on the line for each day to configure the schedule. Each square represents a half hour period. The Clear button can be used to wipe the schedule clean and start again.
You can name the schedule anything you like. See the hints and tips section at the bottom of this page for some considerations to think about.
Remember to Save the schedule after making changes! If you navigate away from the page without pressing Save your changes will be discarded. The Save button will only show up if there are pending changes.
The Copy to clipboard and Paste from clipboard buttons can be used to quickly copy a previous schedule to a new one.
The grey copy icon and the blue paste icon at the end of each row can be used to quickly copy one day's schedule to another day.
Note that the paste buttons will only show up if your clipboard contains schedule information
Assigning a schedule to a system
Once you have created a schedule, you can assign it to a system from the Systems -> Schedules tab.
The schedule can be selected from the drop down list once the schedule has been enabled for the particular feature you want to control.
The same schedule can be applied to multiple systems and multiple actions on the same system. For instance, you could use the same schedule across 5 different systems to both arm it and switch on the floodlights.
Check what systems are using a schedule
At the moment we do not have a way of easily reviewing the schedules that are applied to each system. However, a workaround is to look at the list of systems assigned to each schedule on the edit schedule page.
How are schedules applied
The configured schedule will only take effect at the next change configured in the schedule. By way of example:
The current time is 10AM
You configure a schedule to arm the system at 8AM and disarm at 8PM
The system is currently disarmed
In the above example, the system will not arm for the first time until 8AM on the following day. The system will attempt to disarm at 8PM on the same day, but this will have no effect since the system is already disarmed.
The same logic applies if you manually disarm a system that is armed on a schedule. Your manual arming change will be overridden only on the next scheduled arming change.
In the above example, if you need the system to be armed for the current day, you would need to manually arm the system after configuring the schedule.
What happens if the system had a flat battery
If the system was offline when a schedule meant it should have changed, it will catch up when it next comes online. This is useful if the system is solar powered and the battery was flat first thing in the morning when it was meant to disarm, but it came online later in the morning when the sun came out.
The behaviour is best explained by way of an example:
The system had a schedule that said it was meant to disarm at 7AM
The system had a flat battery and was offline from 2AM until 10AM
The system was therefore unable to disarm at 7AM because it was offline
When the system came back online at 10AM because the solar had recharged the battery, it would have still been armed (because the arm state is persisted across a reboot)
When the system starts back up, it checks what time it shut down (in this case 2AM). It then 'plays back' any schedule changes that it missed whilst it was offline.
In this case, it would 'play back' the schedule changes between 2AM and 10M and disarm itself as a result.
The Event Log for the system will always show the time that it actually disarmed rather than the time it was scheduled to disarm if it was offline.
This behaviour is the same for any scheduled actions; ie. arming / disarming or floodlights / infrared lights.
Hints & tips for organising schedules
Minimise the number of schedules
We recommend minimising the number of schedules where possible. This will make it far easier to update schedules in the future.
As an example, if your standard monitoring hours are 5PM until 7AM, we recommend creating a schedule called 'Standard Monitoring 5AM-7PM M-F' and applying it to all systems that follow this standard schedule.
This way when you come to a holiday period that requires a change in schedule, you can simply change the schedule in one place and all the systems that depend on that schedule will update.
Use reseller schedules where possible
We recommend creating schedules at the reseller level where possible and only create the schedule at the child team level if they require something very unusual or if the customer is self managing the schedule.
Schedules created at the reseller level are easier to update in bulk for holiday periods (because you can quickly click through them all) and there is no chance of the customer accidentally changing them if they have admin access to their team.
Remember that the name of reseller schedules will be visible to every child team under your reseller team.
This means if you create a schedule called 'Top Secret Customer Schedule' at the reseller level, every child team will also be able to see the name of this schedule and their monitoring hours.
If you are using child teams to organise your own internal locations this may not be a problem, but be aware of it if you have child teams belonging to unconnected third parties.
Give schedules sensible names
We recommend giving your schedules sensible names. Come up with a standard format and stick to it.
For instance, 9AM-5PM Mon-Thu, 9AM-3PM Fri would mean that the system is monitored from 5PM to 9AM on Monday to Thursday but only until 3PM on a Friday. On a weekend it is monitored 24/7.
The convention assumes that the schedule lists the times when the site is not armed, and all other times it is assumed to be armed. This is generally easier than listing the times it should be monitored.
If a new customer needs a special schedule, you can create another schedule such as 9AM-4PM Mon-Thu, 9AM-12AM Fri.
Timezone considerations
At the moment schedules are not timezone aware. Schedules are stored in UTC and all Edge Controllers are in UTC.
When schedules are displayed and configured, they are 'shifted' into the timezone of your computer.
For example, if you are in Chicago, your timezone is UTC-5. This means if you configure a schedule on a computer with it's timezone set to UTC-5 for a system also located in Chicago, it will behave as expected.
If you are operating across timezones, you will need to manually create schedules that account for these timezone differences. It may be easier to temporarily change your PC into the timezone you are working in. In the future we will improve the handling of different timezones.
Daylight saving time / clock changes
Daylight saving clock changes do not affect schedules and you do not need to make any adjustments to schedules to prepare for them.
By way of example, if you configure a schedule in June during BST (UTC+1) to be 5PM -> 8AM, this will be converted to UTC behind the scenes and saved as 4PM -> 7AM.
The Edge Controllers are always in UTC. Therefore, when they arm the system at 4PM UTC, this will be correct (as it is 5PM BST as you configured).
When the clocks change in October, your timezone will convert back to UTC. The Edge Controller will continue to arm at 4PM UTC as nothing has changed as far as it is concerned.
The only thing that will change is when you look at the schedule editor, it will now show as the system arming at 4PM (because it is no longer shifted by +1 hour because you are no longer in BST+1).
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