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A Scheduled Query Stopped Arriving

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If a scheduled query report missed its latest email or stopped arriving, work through this checklist in order. It applies to schedules in any application's Query Center. The first two causes explain most missing reports.

Even when a schedule uses data from a specific application, such as meetings or events, the same shared scheduler runs it. Delivery problems usually point to the schedule, not that application's records or features.

Start in the application whose Query Center holds the schedule, under Queries › Scheduled Queries. Each application keeps its own schedules, so a finance report schedule is in that application's Query Center, not in Membership. If the schedule uses a colleague's private saved query, it will not appear in your list, so ask that colleague to check it.

1. The Run Found No Records ​

Why. New schedules have Do not send an email when the query has no results selected by default. When a run finds no records, Rhythm does not send the email and does not record the run as skipped. The run still appears in Last Run because the query did start.

Check. Choose Edit this schedule... and check whether that checkbox is selected. Then run the saved query yourself: select the schedule's name, choose Run, and confirm whether it returns rows. Rhythm calculates relative dates when each run starts, so a run on a different day can cover a different date range. Records changed after the scheduled time were not included in that run. A daily schedule that filters on a condition like "purchase date equals the reference date" can miss records whose timestamp falls just outside that narrow window. A broader relative filter, such as "on or after two days before the reference date," captures the intended records more reliably. Query results, including a Contacts query, can also take a few minutes to catch up after you update the records they search. If you just changed a record, it may not appear right away, even though the query and schedule are working correctly. Recent edits to a record, or to a badge name it depends on, can take a little while to show up in query results for the same reason.

Fix. If recipients should get an email every time, even when the query returns no rows, clear the checkbox and choose Save Changes.

A Field Can Return Blank Results Even When the Data Still Exists

Some query output fields, such as fields based on portal login activity, have returned blank even when the underlying data was still present. If a field you expect to see populated is blank across many records, do not assume the activity never happened. Contact Support so the field itself can be checked.

2. The Schedule Is Switched Off ​

Why. A switched-off schedule shows a red inactive badge beside its name in Scheduled Queries, and its scheduled runs stop. A schedule is switched off when:

  • someone set Status: to Inactive;
  • the saved query fails to run for the fourth time over the schedule's whole life. Rhythm keeps counting failures and does not clear that count after a successful run, so occasional failures spread over months still add up;
  • Rhythm cannot prepare or send the delivery email. One email failure is enough, such as a custom email body Rhythm could not use or a brief email-sending problem;
  • the schedule's underlying process name is too long. This has prevented a schedule from ever running, even though it saves normally and shows no error: Last Run never populates and no email is sent. If a schedule with a long name never runs and nothing else here explains it, try shortening the schedule's name. Rhythm has also fixed a similar defect, seen in more than one application, where a schedule saved normally and showed a next-run date but never actually fired at the scheduled time and sent no results. If a schedule behaves this way now and none of the causes above explains it, contact Support so engineering can check for a similar underlying cause.

No one is notified when a schedule switches itself off, and the list does not show the reason.

You may also find that a schedule already set to Inactive will not switch back to Active and save. A brief interruption to the query service has occasionally caused this, rather than anything wrong with the schedule. If reactivating fails without any explanation, wait a while and try again before contacting Support.

Check. Look for the inactive badge, then run the saved query yourself. If it fails with an error, the saved query needs repair; see cause 3.

Fix.

  1. Fix what made it fail: repair the saved query, or, if you recently edited the email, restore the Location of Query Results merge field and return to a simple body.
  2. Choose Edit this schedule..., set Status: to Active, and choose Save Changes.
  3. To confirm, choose Process this scheduled query immediately and check that the email arrives.

When you switch the schedule back on, Rhythm checks the whole schedule again. It will not save until you correct any setting that is no longer valid, such as the recurrence or a recipient address.

Confirm the Scheduled Path, Not Just Immediate Delivery

Process this scheduled query immediately confirms that Rhythm can build and send the email right now. It does not prove the scheduled run itself works, because the two paths are triggered differently. For a more complete check, add yourself as a temporary recipient, set the schedule, or a copy of it, to run within the next hour, and confirm that the email arrives on its own without anyone processing it immediately.

A Re-Enabled Schedule Keeps Its Failure Count

If Rhythm switched a schedule off after four failures, the next failure switches it off again. To start with a clean count, create a new schedule for the same saved query with the same settings, and delete the old one.

If the schedule keeps switching itself off, or you cannot tell why it did, contact Support as described below.

3. The Saved Query Changed or Broke ​

Why. A schedule runs the current version of its saved query. If someone edited the query, the next email uses that version, so the results may have no rows or may include different columns. If a field used in the query's criteria was removed, such as a deleted custom field, every run fails, and those failures count toward switching the schedule off.

A criteria value that Rhythm no longer recognizes can also break a query, and it can be harder to spot. Previewing and running the query can both fail, the query can keep loading indefinitely, and the only error may be a generic message such as Unable to preview query [object Object] or Unable to execute query [object Object], with no further detail. A saved query can also fail to load at all, or spin without finishing, when it references a field that is missing or no longer valid. If that happens, look for a message naming the missing field so you can remove or replace it in the criteria.

Separately, a saved contact query built on the Enabled criterion has been known to suddenly return no records even though nothing else about your Rhythm account changed. If that happens, try changing the condition, for example to "is not blank," or rebuilding the query from scratch, since either has restored results in this situation.

Check. Select the schedule's name to open the saved query in the designer, then run it.

Fix. Repair the criteria as described in Save a Query and Organize Folders, then save the query. If the schedule was switched off, switch it back on as described in cause 2. If the query returns a generic or unhelpful error like the ones above and you cannot identify the bad criteria value yourself, contact Support with the query's name and the exact error text.

You can also use a saved query proactively to catch problems elsewhere. For example, a query that flags registrations where the linked order is Cancelled but the registration is still Active can help you find and clean up mismatched records, especially when you schedule it to notify you.

4. The Email Went Somewhere Else, or Nowhere ​

Check Destination Email Addresses: in Edit this schedule... because the list screen does not show recipients. Rhythm accepts a mistyped address if it looks like an email address, and it does not know that the email cannot be delivered. Updating someone's email address with Support, or in their own Console profile, does not automatically update where a schedule sends results. The person's Console sign-in email, their scheduled query recipient address, and any contact record used for support purposes are maintained separately, so update the schedule's recipient list directly when someone's address changes.

Check the recipient's mailbox. Rhythm sends one email to all recipients together from the From: address on the schedule. Ask recipients to check junk and filtered folders. If a copy of the email is addressed to the same mailbox that also sent it, some mail providers reject the copy as a likely duplicate or spoofed message. For example, this can happen when the same address is both the sender and a courtesy copy recipient. Changing the copied address can resolve it.

Check for suppression. An address or domain that previously bounced or rejected a Rhythm email can end up on an email suppression list, including after an unrelated outage on the recipient's side. A suppressed address stops receiving all Rhythm email, not only this schedule's results, until the suppression is manually cleared. Suppression does not affect signing in or using the Console or portal normally; it only affects receiving email. If you suspect this, contact Support so the address can be checked and, if needed, removed from suppression.

Check for a sandbox. If the schedule is in your sandbox, emails may be redirected to the sandbox's redirect list. See Email Settings: Senders, Reply-To, Footer, and Sandbox Redirects.

Check whether Rhythm actually sent it. You can check sent system emails, including scheduled query results, from the CRM area. An individual contact record's Email tab shows its own send and bounce details, including a Statistics view for that record. If CRM history shows the message as sent, or as delivered to the recorded address, treat the send itself as successful. Then check the recipient's mail server, spam filtering, or mailbox rules instead of reprocessing or resending. A recipient reporting that they did not receive the email does not by itself mean Rhythm failed to send it. Whether an email was read is visible only on that individual record. There is no separate report or list of every email opened, for a scheduled query or otherwise. See Email Delivery Tracking: Sent Mail, Opens, Clicks, and Bounces.

Check whether the email came from Rhythm at all. A recurring report that looks similar to a scheduled query email is not always one. If the sender name or signature does not match Rhythm's usual sender identity, and you cannot find a matching entry under that application's Scheduled Queries, the report may be generated by an external tool or another integration rather than by Rhythm.

5. It Arrives More Than Once ​

Why. Duplicate scheduled emails usually come from one of three places: the visible schedule actually ran twice, a second less obvious schedule for the same query also ran, or the recipient's own mail system delivered a single message more than once. A report's recurrence can also be set more often than intended, such as hourly when you meant daily. A daylight-saving-time change has also been known to make a report appear to arrive twice around the shift. Seeing the same message logged more than once in email history does not always mean two messages were delivered; Console records have shown multiple entries for a single send that the recipient received only once.

Check. Add a short, unique marker to the schedule's name, subject, or body, add yourself as a test recipient, and compare what arrives with what other recipients report. If every recipient sees the duplicate, check the schedule's recurrence setting because an over-frequent recurrence or a daylight-saving change is more likely. If only some recipients see it, compare their results directly. That does not always point to a mail-system cause on its own; some accounts have reported duplicates that were not tied to any one recipient's domain.

Fix. Correct the recurrence if it is more frequent than intended, and check Scheduled Queries for a second schedule sending the same query. If neither explains it, contact Support with the marker you used and which recipients did and did not see duplicates.

6. It Arrives at the Wrong Time, or Not Yet ​

  • Time zone. If your organization is in another time zone, reports arrive hours earlier or later than the clock time shown because schedules run on New York time.
  • The query runs first. Rhythm sends the email when the run finishes, so it can arrive a little after the scheduled time. On occasion, this delay has been longer than expected, with successful runs arriving 20 to 30 minutes after the scheduled time rather than just a few minutes late.
  • The end date has passed, or the start date is still ahead. Changing only Start Date/Time: or End Date/Time: on an existing schedule does not change when it runs; create a new schedule with the dates you need. A scheduled report can also stop appearing because it expired. If a report you relied on is simply gone rather than late, check whether it was a scheduled report, rather than a canned report, and recreate it if so.
  • Last Run means the run started, not that Rhythm delivered an email.

7. The Link in the Email No Longer Works ​

The link in a delivery email works for 30 days; after that, the file is gone. Choose Process this scheduled query immediately to send every recipient a fresh email with a new link, or run the saved query and download the results yourself. There is no way to generate a scheduled report for a specific date in the past. If you missed one or more daily deliveries, you can only run the report for the current day, and the schedule otherwise continues on its normal cadence going forward.

When to Contact Support ​

Contact Support if the schedule keeps switching itself off, if you cannot find why it stopped, or if Process this scheduled query immediately delivers but scheduled runs never do and Last Run does not change at the scheduled times. Although the list does not show the reason, Rhythm records a reason on the schedule that Support can see.

Running the saved query yourself, or choosing Process this scheduled query immediately, does not use the same path as a normal timed run. Success there does not prove the scheduled path is healthy. If manual or immediate runs work while timed runs never do, mention that mismatch specifically because it helps narrow down the cause.

Include:

  • the application, the schedule's name, and the saved query's name;
  • when the report should have arrived, and the dates of the last one received and the first one missed;
  • whether the schedule shows inactive;
  • whether running the schedule now and running the saved query yourself worked, and any error message you saw;
  • one or more recipient addresses that did not receive it. Specific examples make it easier for engineering to investigate a delivery problem.
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