Provide Advanced Scheduling Options for Data Pipelines

Current scheduling options for Data Pipelines in Microsoft Fabric are very limited, supporting only minute-based, hourly, daily, and weekly triggers, and lacking robust interval configurations or multiple triggers within a single pipeline run. This constrains scenarios such as running frequent updates during weekdays, then slowing down on weekends, or restricting half-hour refreshes to daytime hours. As a workaround, some users add extra pipelines or conditional logic to control time-based execution at the start of a pipeline, but this quickly becomes cumbersome to maintain.

Proposed Feature

• Allow users to define multiple schedules or a cron-like expression directly within a single pipeline’s scheduling settings.

• Enable advanced recurring schedules that span specific day and time windows (e.g., “run every 30 minutes between 6 AM and 8 PM”), as well as once-per-month or custom intervals.

• Provide a more intuitive user interface for scheduling multiple time windows without requiring additional pipeline objects or complicated conditional checks.

Why This Matters

• Reduces overhead of building and maintaining separate “child” pipelines or multiple triggers that only exist to address scheduling constraints.

• Prevents complicated parameter and conditional logic in a single pipeline, which can be confusing to debug or update.

• Empowers more granular and flexible scheduling (for example, different refresh frequencies on weekdays vs. weekends) without sacrificing readability.

Current Workarounds (Short-Term)

• Use conditional If activities at the pipeline’s start to check the current day or time, and proceed only if it falls within the desired schedule window.

• Create separate pipelines and invoke them from a main pipeline, each using a different schedule trigger.

• Call the pipeline via REST API or an external service (e.g., Power Automate, Logic Apps) that supports more advanced scheduling patterns