Running A Batch Job Once A Minute With Spigots

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🧠 Overview

Salesforce’s native job scheduler is limited—you can only run scheduled jobs once per hour using standard Cron expressions. This creates bottlenecks, especially when near real-time automation is needed.

Spigots removes this limitation by allowing jobs to run as often as once a minute (or even faster), enabling a whole new class of fast-reacting, data-driven automations.

🚫 Native Limitation: Salesforce Scheduler

Standard scheduled jobs (like those used by DLRS) must run on a fixed schedule.
Fastest interval: once every hour
This delay limits the freshness of calculated data (e.g. rollup summaries)
Real-time mode is error-prone (due to governor limits or transaction rollbacks)

✅ Spigots Solution: Always-Running Spigots

Spigots introduces atomic, composable automation units that can be:

Always running
Executed based on real-time conditions (e.g. if data exists to process)
Scheduled independently of native Salesforce limitations

🧩 Example: DLRS Rollup Every Minute

To run DLRS rollups more frequently, we define a Spigot like this:

Spigot:
  Name: Run DLRS Rollup Job
  Schedule: Always Running
  Inputs:
    Object: dlrs__RollupSummaryScheduleItem__c
    Limit: 1
  Actions:
      Name: Trigger DLRS Job
      Type: Spex
      Subtype: Batchable
      Function: RollupJob
      Namespace: dlrs

🔁 How It Works

Every minute (or at a configurable interval), Spigot App Configurantions run and evaluates the ‘ready to run’ Spigots.
If there’s at least one DLRS job waiting (via the dlrs__RollupSummaryScheduleItem__c object), it triggers the dlrs.RollupJob Batch Class.
This results in DLRS rollups executing roughly once a minute, instead of once an hour.

📈 Benefits of Frequent Scheduled Jobs in Spigots

Benefit	Description
🔄 Fresh data	Your rollup fields (e.g. `Last Call Time`) updates quickly, improving automation accuracy
💥 No governor errors	Avoids real-time DLRS mode, reducing risk of rollback errors
🧘 Simple setup	Just define a Spigot — no special cron expressions or Apex scheduling needed

🧪 Example Use Case: Lead Outflow

With this Spigot running every minute:

A completed call Task logs on a Lead
DLRS updates the Last Call Time field within 1–2 minutes
A downstream Spigot evaluates if the Lead qualifies for outflow, which depends on Last Call Time.
All fully automated, nearly instant, and guaranteed to be correct

🧵 Summary

Spigots supercharges scheduled jobs in Salesforce by:

Letting you define event-driven or high-frequency Spigots
Eliminating reliance on hourly cron-based limits
Unlocking near-real-time rollups and workflows, safely and scalably