Workflow inactive when no one is viewing the site?

[cedricalbeke]

Hi bubblers!

It’s been a crazy few days since i discovered bubble. I am absolutely in love, let me say that first.

There seems to be an issue for me tho, my workflow seems to be only active when someone actually has the site open. Basically it’s pretty simple:

Every 60 Seconds - Change a thing

field_1 = field_1 + rate

Where both fields are numbers.

Came back this morning to see no change at all, after having the site open for a few minutes the field has changes, meaning the workflow is active.

Is this maybe due to the free starter version - is there a policy that “shuts down” the app when no one is actively using it or something?

Thank you for any help!

[mikeloc]

Hi there, @cedricalbeke… the behavior you described is simply how the Do every X seconds workflow works. It is primarily used to trigger actions that run on the page (which means the page has to be open for the workflow to run), as opposed to scheduling a backend (recurring) workflow (which you can’t do on the free plan). Here is a similar thread for reference…

"Do every X seconds" with computer turned off

Hi! I have a page that does things every 60 seconds (using a “do every 60 seconds” action in a workflow). The problem is that the computer (the browser, actually) has to be on. Is there any way to make this whole thing work without the computer and browser on? My gut feeling is this is not possible and I would need to move this to a Heroku think to make the operations server-side, but who knows… Thanks a lot!

Hope this helps.

Best…
Mike

[adamhholmes]

Yes, on-page workflows on run on the page - which means if no one is viewing the page they don’t run. If the page is closed then the workflow stops running.

If you want to run workflows that will run in the background regardless of whether anyone has loaded a page or not you’ll need to use a backend workflow instead of a page workflow.

Backend workflows aren’t available on free plans, but can be used on all types of paid plans.

[cedricalbeke]

Thank you for the quick answer.

In paid versions, what is the shortest possible interval to run a cron via backend workflow as of now?

The thread is over 4 years old, that’s why i’m asking.

Many thanks again!

[mikeloc]

The shortest interval to run a recurring event is daily, but a scheduled API workflow can call itself again immediately or any number of seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, or years in the future.

[cedricalbeke]

Alright. I’m going for easycron.com if anyone ever looks at this again. They have a plugin for bubble, there’s a free starter version and pricing seems reasonable.

Have a great week anyone