From content settings page

The Edit Settings icon found on your Home page or content admin page takes you to the main Content settings page. Here you can update all settings related to your content.

Info

Add or update the following meta data:

  • Title
  • Description

You can also choose to set an automatically generated content image thumbnail, which will appear on your Home page. Toggle it off to show a default image based on your content’s data framework.

Source

Make changes related to your deployment source:

  • Framework
  • GitHub repository
  • Branch
  • Primary file
  • Python version

In this section you can also update the Automatically publish on push feature. When this is toggled on, Connect Cloud will automatically republish the content when anyone pushes to your repository’s branch.

URL

You can share your content using the default URL: https://[content-id].share.connect.posit.cloud

Alternatively, you can customize the URL by assigning a custom name. Once a custom name is set, a preview of the new URL will be displayed in the format: https://[account-name]-[custom-name].share.connect.posit.cloud

Both URLs can be easily copied and shared.

Variables

Add, update, or remove your secret environment variables.

Compute

Compute Settings control the resources allocated to your application’s deployment or document rendering.

Memory

The Memory setting controls the maximum amount of RAM your application can use while running. This is critical for applications that process large datasets or run complex, memory-intensive calculations. Insufficient memory can cause your application to crash or perform poorly. You can set this value between 4 GB and 16 GB, depending on the resource limits of your Connect Cloud plan.

CPU

The CPU setting controls the number of CPUs available to your application, which impacts its ability to handle concurrent user requests and heavy processing. This is key for parallel processing, allowing your application to split and run multiple tasks simultaneously. You can configure this setting from a minimum of 1 CPU up to a maximum of 4 CPUs, depending on your Connect Cloud plan.

Runtime

Runtime Settings provide granular control over your application’s behavior, particularly concerning how it manages user connections and worker processes. These settings help optimize application responsiveness and resource utilization.

Worker Settings

Workers are processes that are started with your application code loaded. Since many data applications use single-threaded languages, multiple workers are necessary to handle concurrent user connections efficiently.

Max Worker Processes

This setting defines the maximum number of worker processes that can be started for your application. When the Worker Load Factor threshold is reached, new workers are added up to this limit to handle additional connections. Potential values range from 1 to 10 and 10 is the default.

Worker Load Factor

The Worker Load Factor is a threshold percentage that, when exceeded, triggers the creation of a new worker process (up to the Max Worker Processes limit). This setting allows you to control when your application scales out to accommodate new user connections. A lower percentage will cause your application to scale more aggressively, while a higher percentage will make it more conservative in its resource use. Potential values range from 1% to 100% with 50% as the default.

Startup Timeout

This is the time in seconds that the system will wait for a worker process to start up successfully. If your application takes a long time to initialize, you may need to increase this value. Potential values range from 1 second to 300 seconds, with a default of 60 seconds.

Idle Timeout

The Idle Timeout is the time in seconds that an inactive worker process, with no active connections, will wait before being shut down. The default value is 5 seconds, and the maximum is 60 seconds.

Connection Settings

These settings manage how your application handles incoming and outgoing connections from viewers of your content.

Max Connections

The Max Connections setting limits the number of concurrent connections a single worker process can handle. If your application has long-running operations, lowering this value can prevent one user from negatively impacting the experience of others. Possible values range from 1 to 200, with a default of 20.

Connection Timeout

The Connection Timeout is the duration of inactivity (in minutes) after which a user’s browser connection to a worker process is considered idle and is closed. The default value is 60 minutes, and the minimum is zero minutes.

Read Timeout

The Read Timeout is the duration of browser-to-worker inactivity (in minutes) after which the connection is considered idle and is closed. This setting is useful for applications where the server is still sending data to the client even when the user isn’t actively interacting (e.g., clicking or typing).

It’s particularly useful for non-interactive applications, such as a dashboard that refreshes data on a regular schedule. For these applications, set the value to 0 to ensure the connection remains open as long as the server is sending data.

Unlike the Connection Timeout (a general inactivity setting), Read Timeout specifically allows the connection to remain active as long as the server is sending data. The available range is 0 to 240 minutes, with a default of 60 minutes.

Schedule

On paid plans, content with source code can be scheduled to republish at specific times.

For example, you may have a Quarto document that gets data from a source that updates daily. You can use the scheduling feature to republish your document daily sometime after that external data source refreshes.

To set a new schedule:

  1. Enable a schedule by activating the Enable schedule toggle in the Schedule tab of the Settings pane.
  2. Select the time zone that you want your schedule to reflect (e.g., America/New York).
  3. Choose the interval for which you want your schedule to repeat.

Interval Scheduling Options

Monthly

Configure a monthly repeating schedule:

  • Repeat Every: Select the number of months.
  • On: Choose either a specific day of the month (e.g., the 15th) or specify the first day of the week in the month (e.g., the first Monday).

Weekly

Configure a weekly repeating schedule:

  • Days of the Week: Select one or more days of the week (e.g., Mon, Wed, Fri).
  • Time: Specify the time for the publish on the selected day(s).

Daily

Configure a daily repeating schedule:

  • Repeat Every: Select the number of days.
  • Time: Specify the time for the publish.
  • Optional: Select the option to Skip Weekends.

Hourly

Configure an hourly repeating schedule:

  • Repeat Every: Select the number of hours and minutes past the hour (e.g., Every 3 hours and 15 minutes past the hour).
  • Optional: Select the option to run Only During Standard Business Hours (9:00 AM to 5:00 PM) and/or the option to Skip Weekends.

Does not repeat

Configure a one-time publish event:

  • Publish Time: Select a specific future date and time for the one-time republish.

Next Publish Time

Once you set a schedule, the next automatic publish time will be displayed based on the interval configuration you selected.

Underlying Cron Expression

Connect Cloud translates your schedule inputs into a cron expression, which is a string of characters that defines a schedule for future jobs to be run on the system.

For any repeating time interval, you can access the actual cron expression by clicking How is this time calculated?.

Understanding the Cron Format

A cron expression is typically composed of five fields separated by spaces. Each field represents a unit of time, and the platform uses your interval selections (Monthly, Daily, etc.) to fill these values:

  • 1st Field: Minute (0–59)
  • 2nd Field: Hour (0–23)
  • 3rd Field: Day of the Month (1–31)
  • 4th Field: Month (1–12)
  • 5th Field: Day of the Week (0–7, where both 0 and 7 are Sunday)

For example, 0 9 * * 1 would run every Monday at 9:00 AM.