CRON to run every 30 minutes during business hours

[Melissa Kibrick]

I want to check a filter and send an alert every 30 minutes but only during business hours. The issue is we are running on Pacific Time so my CRON expression looks like this:

0 0/30 0-1,14-23 ? * MON-FRI

This works well Tuesday to Thursday, but it also send alerts on Sunday afternoon and stops alerts 2 hours early on Friday.

I really don't want to create 2 automations just to get 2 CRON statements.

[Darryl Lee · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately, I think the situation is still as @Jack Brickey wrote in Nov 2020:

Automation runs at UTC. I wish you could choose your Zone but not there today. 

I wonder if maybe you could use the {{now}} Smart Value and combine it with the convertToTimeZone function to write your own Advanced compare condition. I'll think on this a bit.

[Darryl Lee]

Or maybe something with the toBusinessDay, toBusinessDayBackwards, or plus or diff using BusinessDays (business days are considered to be Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm)

Sorry, date calculations usually make my head hurt. But maybe you or others could figure out something clever with those?

[Melissa Kibrick]

After considering what it would take to implement those smart values, I just went with creating 2 automations. :(

[Darryl Lee]

LOL. Yeah, sometimes the less elegant way is probably simpler. :-}