Schedules: Make it possible to list buffered executions

[dhiaayachi]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

A user creates a schedules and sets policy.overlap to ScheduleOverlapPolicy.BUFFER_ALL. At some point in time, user now want to "see" the list of buffered executions (ie. executions that have been queued to be executed, one at a time, after the current workflow execution completes).

As it is now, buffered executions appears neither in info.futureActionTimes, info.recentActions nor info.runningWorkflows, and no other field hints that some executions are currently buffered.

Describe the solution you'd like

• Add a field buffered_actions to the ScheduleInfo (code) structure returned by the DescribeSchedule API.

  In its simplest form, that field could be defined as:

  repeated google.protobuf.Timestamp buffered_actions = 9 [(gogoproto.stdtime) = true];

  Arguably, it could be marginally more useful to make that field a collection of some new protobuf object, containing both the original schedule time of the buffered execution and a flag indicating how that execution got queued up (eg. the execution got queued up because the schedule time was reached, because of a backfill request, or because of a "trigger immediately" request).

• Similarly add a field buffered_actions to the ScheduleListInfo structure, returned by the ListSchedules API.

[dhiaayachi]

Thank you for your feature request!

This is a great suggestion that would enhance the visibility of buffered executions for users.

While we don't have this feature implemented currently, you could work around it by:

• Adding a buffered_actions field to the ScheduleInfo and ScheduleListInfo structures. You can do this by editing the protobuf files directly.
• Creating a custom query using a search_attribute to identify buffered executions. This could be implemented as part of the Schedule's Action.

Please note that these workarounds might not be as robust or efficient as a native feature. We're committed to exploring and implementing features like this in the future.

[dhiaayachi]

Thank you for your feature request! We understand the need for greater visibility into buffered executions.

Currently, there isn't a direct way to view buffered executions using the Temporal APIs.

To address this, you can try the following workaround:

• Use Search Attributes: Add a custom search attribute to your workflows indicating whether they are buffered. This lets you later retrieve and filter workflows using the Temporal CLI or Visibility APIs.

We appreciate your suggestion and will consider it for future development.