Scheduling and run order¶

Once the lineup is clean, you want it to stay clean without doing this by hand every week. This page covers what to run, how often, and (the part that bites people) what order to run things in so the plugins do not undo each other.

Run order matters¶

Stream-Mapparr and Event Channel Managarr will fight over channel visibility

Both toggle channels on and off, using different criteria.

Stream-Mapparr's Manage Channel Visibility disables every channel in the profile, then re-enables the ones that have at least one stream.
Event Channel Managarr hides channels that have no event on right now.

If Event Channel Managarr runs first and hides an empty PPV channel, and Stream-Mapparr then runs and sees that the channel does have a stream attached, it turns it straight back on.

Always run Stream-Mapparr before Event Channel Managarr. If you schedule both, leave enough of a gap that the first has finished before the second starts.

The safe daily order is:

flowchart LR
    A["M3U refresh"] --> B["Stream-Mapparr<br/>match, sort, visibility"]
    B --> C["EPG-Janitor<br/>heal EPG"]
    C --> D["Event Channel Managarr<br/>hide dead events"]

IPTV Checker sits outside the daily loop. It is slow, and Stream-Mapparr only needs its results to be reasonably fresh.

Suggested cadence¶

Plugin	How often	Notes
IPTV Checker	Weekly, overnight	A full scan of several thousand streams can take many hours. Window it so it is not running while people are watching.
Stream-Mapparr	Daily, or after each M3U refresh	Has a built-in scheduler, and can also trigger itself automatically on M3U refresh (see below).
EPG-Janitor	As needed	No scheduler. Every action is manual.
Event Channel Managarr	Every few hours	Event channels turn over through the day. Also set Auto-rescan after M3U refresh, or Dispatcharr's Auto Channel Sync will un-hide everything on the next refresh.
Channel Mapparr	Rarely	Run it when you add a provider or your names drift. It has no scheduler.
Lineuparr	Rarely	Re-run when the provider's lineup changes.

Three plugins, three different time formats¶

This catches everyone. There is no single scheduling format across the suite.

Plugin	Format	Example	Time zone used
IPTV Checker	cron	`0 3 * * 0`	Its own setting
Stream-Mapparr	`HHMM`, comma-separated	`0400,1600`	Dispatcharr's global Time Zone
Event Channel Managarr	`HHMM`, comma-separated	`0600,1200,1800`	Dispatcharr's global Time Zone
EPG-Janitor	(no scheduler)	n/a	n/a
Channel Mapparr	(no scheduler)	n/a	n/a

HHMM means HHMM

Stream-Mapparr and Event Channel Managarr accept 0400, not 04:00. A value with a colon is silently ignored. The schedule simply never fires, with no error to tell you why.

The per-plugin Timezone settings are gone

Stream-Mapparr and Event Channel Managarr both used to have their own Timezone field. They now follow Dispatcharr's global Time Zone (Settings → General). If that is unset, Event Channel Managarr falls back to UTC. Set the global time zone correctly and everything lines up.

Automating on M3U refresh instead of on a clock¶

The tidiest setup skips fixed times altogether and reacts to your M3U refresh, so work happens exactly when there is new data to process. Both settings need Dispatcharr v0.27+.

Stream-Mapparr → Auto-match after M3U refresh: runs Match & Assign as soon as a refresh completes.

Warning

Remember that Match & Assign replaces each matched channel's stream list. Turning this on means that runs unattended after every refresh. Only enable it once you are happy with what a manual run produces.
Event Channel Managarr → Auto-rescan after M3U refresh: re-hides event channels that Dispatcharr's Auto Channel Sync just un-hid.

Before you automate anything¶

Run each plugin by hand at least once, with Dry Run enabled where it exists, and read the danger callout on its page. Several of these actions delete things. See Which plugins do I need? for the short list. Automating a destructive action you have not watched run once is how people lose their lineup.