A lot of useful work is not a single request. It is the same report every Monday, a folder that needs watching, or a launch that takes six weeks of small steps. Upfyn has two features for this kind of work, and they answer different questions.
Schedules answer "when should this run again?" Goals answer "what are we trying to reach, and how far along are we?" Many people use both together: a goal for the destination, and schedules for the check-ins and the recurring steps on the way.
Schedules: ongoing work, on time
Open Schedules in the left rail. The easiest way to make one is to ask in your own words:
Every weekday at 8:30, go through my inbox and draft replies to customers. Don't send anything.
Upfyn turns that into a schedule: the instructions, the trigger, the repeat and the member who runs it. You can also fill in the form yourself, or start from one of the templates that come with Upfyn: Daily briefing, Inbox triage, Project health check, Weekly report, Watch a folder and Heartbeat monitor.
Choose what starts it
A schedule can start in four ways:
- Time: every few hours, daily, on weekdays, weekly on the days you pick, monthly, or a custom rule.
- Heartbeat: check something regularly and act only when it needs attention, such as whether a page is still answering.
- Files: run when files in a folder change, after a short wait so a burst of changes counts once.
- Event: a webhook, a GitHub event, something that happens in Upfyn, or a message on a channel you connected, such as Slack or WhatsApp.
Pick who runs it
Every schedule runs as a member. That matters because the member keeps a memory between runs. Your weekly report member remembers that refunds stay out of the sales total and that West is now shown first. Each run starts where the last one stopped. You can read and edit that memory on the schedule's page.
Read the record
Activity shows what is coming up, what runs today and tomorrow, and the results. Every run has a status (Done, Failed, Skipped or Missed), a log, and its own chat, so you can open any run and see exactly what happened.
You stay in control of the routine:
- Run now when you need the result early.
- Pause and Resume at any time.
- Pause after a number of unread results, so a schedule stops itself instead of piling up work nobody reads.
- Change it in chat when the instructions need to change.
Goals: work with a finish line
Some work is not a repeat but a destination: launch the spring range, ship a feature, grow sales, learn a new skill, save money, build a habit. Those are the templates in Goals, and they show the shape of a good goal: something you can recognise as done.
Set the goal
Open Goals and choose Ask Upfyn to plan a goal, or start from a template. A chat opens with "I want to set a goal:" and you finish the sentence. A member then agrees with you what done looks like, writes the plan as steps, and sets up a check-in schedule. That member leads the goal.
Work the steps
Each step is To do, In progress, Done or Blocked. You can move any step yourself, and members tick steps off when their runs finish them. The goal's page shows progress, how many steps are done and what comes next. Blocked steps are visible, not hidden, so you can see where the plan is stuck.
Check in
A goal works because someone keeps asking how it is going. Write how today went, or log a number if the goal has one, such as kilometres run or rupees saved. The page keeps a day streak and the last check-ins, and the member adjusts the plan when reality changes.
You can also talk it through. On the goal's page, the coach hears you and updates the plan as you speak: "The warehouse count slipped to next week. Can we still make March?" is enough for it to move the steps and tell you what changed.
When you get there, Mark goal done. It moves to Done, and you can reopen it if needed.
Using them together
A good pattern for a project with a deadline:
- Set a goal for the outcome and let a member write the plan.
- Let the goal's check-ins run as schedules, so you are asked at a predictable time.
- Add separate schedules for the repeated pieces of the work, such as a weekly status note.
- Review Activity once a day instead of chasing each step.
Schedules run while Upfyn is running on your computer, so leave the desktop on for routines you rely on, and check the results in Activity when you are back.
Ask Upfyn
Use this prompt in Upfyn Desktop to turn your own recurring work into schedules and goals:
Look at the work I keep repeating and the outcomes I am working towards. Suggest which ones should be schedules and which should be goals. For each schedule, propose the trigger, the repeat and the member that runs it. For each goal, propose what done looks like and the first five steps. Set nothing up until I approve the list.