Scheduling options for Edge Delivery Services storefronts

Edge Delivery Services provides several ways to schedule content changes on your storefront. The right approach depends on what you’re scheduling, such as publishing a set of pages, switching promotional content, or automating recurring operations. Use the comparison table below to find the approach that fits your needs, then follow the links to get started.

Migrating from Content Staging?

If you previously used Content Staging in the Commerce Admin to schedule content updates, that feature does not apply to Edge Delivery Services storefronts. The scheduling options below are the replacements.

Comparison

Approach	Best for	Your role	Developer role	Description
Snapshot scheduling	Publishing pages at a specific date and time	Create snapshots, add pages, schedule publishing	One-time registration of your site with the scheduler service	Groups pages into a snapshot that publishes them together at a scheduled time.
Promotion schedules	Turning promotions on and off by date	Author the schedule spreadsheet and content fragments	Implement the storefront code that reads the schedule	Displays different content based on the current date using a spreadsheet with start and end dates. Pages stay published.
AEM Sites scheduled publishing	Publishing content from AEM Author	Schedule publish or unpublish actions in AEM Author	None (beyond initial site setup)	Schedules publish or unpublish actions through the Manage Publication workflow in AEM Author.
Recurring tasks	Automating index publishing, cache purges, and other repetitive operations	None	Set up GitHub Actions in the site repository	Automates Admin API calls on a cron schedule using GitHub Actions.

Deprecated: Crontab scheduling

The original crontab-based scheduler (using a crontab sheet in the .helix folder) is deprecated. If you are currently using crontab scheduling, migrate to one of the approaches below based on what you used it for:

• Publishing or unpublishing pages → Snapshot scheduling
• Publishing snapshots → Snapshot scheduling
• Publishing indexes → Recurring tasks
• HTTP requests or CDN cache purges → Recurring tasks

See the original crontab documentation on aem.live for reference.

Snapshot scheduling

Use snapshot scheduling when you need to publish a set of pages together at a specific date and time. This is the recommended approach for coordinating content launches where you want to review everything before it goes live.

A snapshot captures the current state of one or more pages at a point in time. You add pages to a named snapshot (for example, fall-collection-2026), review the snapshot to verify everything looks correct, and then schedule it to publish. When the scheduled time arrives, all pages in the snapshot go live simultaneously.

Common scenarios:

• Publish a landing page, product pages, and banners together for a product launch.
• Coordinate a site-wide update where dozens of pages must go live at the same time.
• Prepare content in advance and publish it during off-hours without manual intervention.

One-time developer setup required

Before you can schedule snapshots, your developer must register your site with the snapshot scheduler service. This is a one-time setup that requires an Admin API token and an Admin API key with publish permissions.

Get started:

• Document Authoring (da.live): See the DA Snapshots guide for creating, managing, and scheduling snapshots.
• SharePoint or Google Drive: Use the Snapshot Admin tool to manage snapshots and schedule them for publishing.
• All authoring methods: See Snapshots and Reviews on aem.live for the full lifecycle, including review environments and approval workflows.

Promotion schedules

Use promotion schedules when you want to rotate time-sensitive content — like sale banners or seasonal campaigns — on and off based on dates you define. Unlike snapshot scheduling, this approach does not publish or unpublish pages. Instead, it displays different content fragments on already-published pages based on the current date and time.

What you do: Author a schedule spreadsheet with start dates, end dates, and links to content fragments for each promotion. A default entry (with no dates) serves as the fallback when no promotion is active. You also author the content fragments for each promotion.

What your developer does: Implement the storefront code that reads the published schedule and displays the correct content fragment based on the current date.

Common scenarios:

• Display a “4th of July Sale” banner only during the holiday week.
• Rotate seasonal promotions (Memorial Day, Back to School, Halloween) throughout the year.
• Show different hero content or calls-to-action based on an active campaign window.

Preview future promotions

You can preview what your site will look like during a future promotion by appending a schedule parameter to your pre-production URL. For example: https://main--{your-site}--{your-org}.aem.live/?schedule={timestamp}. Do not expose your production promotion data publicly if it contains confidential campaign details.

Get started: Work with your developer to implement promotion schedules for your storefront. The overview above describes the spreadsheet structure and content fragment approach your developer needs to build.

AEM Sites scheduled publishing

Use AEM Sites scheduled publishing when you author content in AEM Sites (WYSIWYG) with AEM as a Cloud Service. This approach uses the Manage Publication workflow in AEM Author to schedule publish or unpublish actions for a specific date and time. Once AEM publishes the content, the changes go live on Edge Delivery Services automatically.

AEM Sites authoring only

This approach only works with AEM Sites (WYSIWYG) authoring. It does not apply to document-based authoring with DA, SharePoint, or Google Drive. For document-based authoring, use snapshot scheduling or promotion schedules instead.

Get started:

• Publishing Pages — Experience League guide with detailed instructions on scheduling publish and unpublish actions.

Recurring tasks

Use recurring tasks to automate repetitive operations on a schedule, such as publishing an index or purging CDN caches. This is a developer-managed approach that replaces the publish-index, http, and similar commands from the deprecated crontab scheduler.

What your developer does: Create a GitHub Action in the site repository that calls the AEM Admin API on a cron schedule. No merchant involvement is needed after the initial setup.

Common scenarios:

• Publish a query index every hour to keep search results current.
• Automate periodic cache purges for frequently updated content.

Get started:

• Schedule recurring tasks — Step-by-step example using GitHub Actions on aem.live.
• Admin API keys — Required for authenticating automated requests to the Admin API.