"Build Periodically" with a Multi-branch Pipeline in Jenkins

If you are using a declarative style Jenkinsfile then you use the triggers directive.

pipeline {
    agent any
    triggers {
        cron('H 4/* 0 0 1-5')
    }
    stages {
        stage('Example') {
            steps {
                echo 'Hello World'
            }
        }
    }
}

If you use a declarative style Pipeline and only want to trigger the build on a specific branch you can do something like this:

String cron_string = BRANCH_NAME == "master" ? "@hourly" : ""

pipeline {
  agent none
  triggers { cron(cron_string) }
  stages {
    // do something
  }
}

Found on Jenkins Jira

This is working for me:

  triggers {
    cron(env.BRANCH_NAME == 'development' ? 'H */12 * * *' : '')
  }

See more in this article

I was able to find an example illustrating this an discarding old builds, which is also something I wanted.

Jenkinsfile in jenkins-infra/jenkins.io:

properties(
    [
        [
            $class: 'BuildDiscarderProperty',
            strategy: [$class: 'LogRotator', numToKeepStr: '10']
        ],
        pipelineTriggers([cron('H/30 * * * *')]),
    ]
)