Cron for Weekly Friday Report (4 PM Friday)

The cron expression 0 16 * * 5 schedules a task to run at 4:00 PM every Friday, ideal for end-of-week reporting.

Field-by-field breakdown:

• 0 (Minute): At minute 0. The task fires at the top of the hour.
• 16 (Hour): At hour 16 (4 PM). The task runs in the late afternoon, one hour before the typical end of business.
• * (Day of Month): Every day from 1 through 31. No restriction on the day of the month.
• * (Month): Every month from January through December. No restriction on which month.
• 5 (Day of Week): Friday only. The value 5 represents Friday in standard cron.

This means your task will execute once per week, every Friday at 4:00 PM. Friday at 4 PM is strategically timed for weekly reporting because it captures nearly the entire work week's data while still allowing an hour for review and distribution before the end of business. Stakeholders receive the weekly summary with enough time to glance at it before leaving for the weekend, and any critical issues can still be flagged before the office closes. This schedule is widely used for weekly KPI reports, sprint progress summaries, project status updates, and team productivity metrics. The one-hour buffer before 5 PM also allows for any post-processing or manual review. This expression is supported by standard cron on Linux/macOS, as well as cloud services like AWS CloudWatch, Google Cloud Scheduler, and GitHub Actions.