Drill schedules turn one-off exercises into a sustained testing programme. Set a recurring cadence for each playbook and CrownSync Playbooks tracks when the next drill is due, reminds owners and admins when one becomes overdue, and flags overdue drills on the dashboard — so your testing evidence never quietly lapses between audits.

How Schedules Work

Each schedule pairs one playbook with a cadence: monthly, quarterly (the NCSC-recommended baseline), every 6 months, or annually. The schedule records the next due date and advances it automatically every time a drill for that playbook is completed — you never need to update it by hand.

Next due date— calculated from your most recent completed drill for that playbook (or from today if none has been run), then advanced by the cadence each time a drill completes.
Overdue reminders— once the due date passes, organisation owners and admins receive a notification (in-app and, depending on their preferences, by email), repeated weekly while the drill remains outstanding.
Dashboard indicator— admins see an amber banner on the dashboard whenever any scheduled drill is overdue, with a direct link to the drill schedules page.

Creating a Schedule

Open Drill Schedules

Go to Admin → Drills. The drill schedules table sits between the statistics cards and the drill history. Only owners and admins can manage schedules.

Add a Schedule

Click Add schedule, choose a playbook and a cadence. You can optionally set the first due date yourself — leave it blank to calculate from your most recent completed drill.

Run Drills as Normal

Start drills from the playbook as usual (see Starting a Drill). Completing a drill automatically records it against the schedule and moves the next due date forward by one cadence interval.

Choosing a Cadence

Quarterly is the right default for most organisations — it matches NCSC guidance and gives you four documented exercises per year to evidence at audit. Consider monthly for your highest-risk scenario (for example ransomware in a healthcare organisation), and rotate which playbook you drill so the programme covers your principal threats over the course of a year.

Schedules feed your audit evidence

Every reminder, drill and completion is recorded in the audit log, and drill reports remain available indefinitely. Together with the schedule itself, this gives ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus assessors a complete picture: a planned testing interval, the evidence it was followed, and the outcomes.

Managing Schedules

From the schedules table you can edit a schedule's cadence or next due date, or remove it entirely (overdue reminders for that playbook stop immediately). Removing a schedule does not affect past drills or their reports. Notification recipients can tune how they receive drill-due reminders under notification preferences.