Scheduled emails

See every email waiting to be sent, check when it goes out, and cancel the ones that should not.

Some emails to candidates do not go out straight away. A delayed rejection email, an email you scheduled for later and an interview invitation set to send at a chosen time all wait in a queue until their send time. The Scheduled Emails page lists everything in that queue across your organisation, so you can check it and stop an email before it reaches the candidate.

Who can use it

Scheduled Emails is for System Admin and HR users. Anyone else who reaches the page sees a permission message. You will find it in Settings, under Automations & Communication. The card is called Scheduled Emails.

An HR user who is limited to certain locations sees only the candidates on jobs they have access to, and can only cancel emails for those candidates. System Admin sees the whole queue. If a candidate's details are hidden from you on a confidential job, their name appears as a placeholder, their email address is masked, and their name is removed from the subject line.

What appears in the queue

Only emails that are waiting to be sent are listed. Once an email has been delivered, cancelled or has failed, it leaves the page. Emails that go out immediately never appear.

• Rejection emails on a job set to delay them. The delay is chosen on the job (see below).
• Emails you compose to a candidate and schedule for later.
• Interview invitations and booking emails that are set to send at a later time.

Stage entry emails are not queued in this way, so they are never listed here.

Reading the list

The list is sorted with the email due soonest at the top. It shows 20 emails per page, with Previous and Next buttons below when there is more than one page.

• Candidate: the candidate's name, with the address the email will be sent to underneath.
• Subject: the subject line. An email without one shows (No subject).
• Scheduled for: the date and time it is due. Some emails leave up to a minute after this time.
• Source: a coloured label showing what created the email: Manual, Rejection, Event Invite, Scheduling or Onboarding.
• Actions: the Cancel button.

The All sources drop-down above the list narrows it to one source. The Onboarding option only appears when onboarding is turned on for your organisation. When the queue is empty you will see "Nothing is waiting to be sent."

Cancel a queued email

1. Go to Settings > Scheduled Emails.
2. Find the email. Use the source filter if the list is long.
3. Select Cancel on its row.
4. In the confirmation, which reads "The email to (candidate name) will not be sent. This cannot be undone.", select Cancel email. To leave it as it is, select Keep it scheduled.

You will see "Scheduled email cancelled" and the row disappears. The candidate is never sent that email, and a cancelled email cannot be brought back. If you still want the candidate to receive something, write a new email to them.

Cancelling stops the email and nothing else. For a rejection email, the candidate stays rejected. Use the reactivate option on the candidate to reverse the rejection itself.

When it is too late to cancel

An email can only be cancelled while it is still waiting. Once Recruit has started delivering it, you see "Email is currently being delivered and cannot be cancelled". If the list is out of date and the email has already gone or been cancelled by someone else, you see "Only scheduled emails can be cancelled". Refresh the page to see the current queue.

An email for a candidate outside an HR user's location access cannot be cancelled by that user. It behaves as if the email does not exist.

Some queued emails are cancelled for you. If a booking is cancelled or rescheduled, or an interview event is closed, the invitation queued for that booking is cancelled automatically.

What happens after an email is sent or cancelled

• A sent email leaves the queue. It shows as Sent on the candidate's Communications tab.
• A cancelled email leaves the queue. The Communications tab shows it as Cancelled.
• An email that could not be delivered shows as Failed. Hover over the status to see why, for example that the recipient has unsubscribed or that their address is suppressed after a bounce. A failed email can be resent from the Communications tab.

The same email on the candidate

Open the candidate and go to the Communications tab. A queued email appears there with the status Scheduled, alongside everything else sent to that candidate. The tab shows Date, Subject, Recipient, Source, Status and Actions, and can be filtered by status and by source. Each Scheduled row has a Cancel button that does the same as the one on the Scheduled Emails page. Its confirmation is titled "Cancel Scheduled Email" and says "This email will not be sent. This cannot be undone."

Use the Scheduled Emails page to work across all candidates, and the candidate's tab when you are already looking at one person.

How the delay is set

The queue itself has no timing settings. Each email is given its send time when it is created.

• Rejection emails: set per job. Open the job, go to the Settings tab and find Rejection Email Settings. Email Delay Mode offers No Email, Send Immediately, Delay 24 Hours, Delay 48 Hours and Delay 1 Week. Only the three delay options put an email in the queue. The send time is counted from the moment the candidate is rejected. Changing the setting later does not move emails that are already queued. Stage automations and rejection emails covers this setting, who can change it and which template is used.
• Emails you compose: in the Send Email window, tick Schedule for later, pick a Date and Time, then select Schedule Email. The time must be at least 2 minutes from now and no more than 30 days ahead.
• Interview invitations: the send time is chosen when the invitation is set up through interview scheduling.

To change the time of a queued email, cancel it and create it again with the new time.