Brainlitter » Problem/Solution – send automated email reminders from SharePoint

Problem/Solution – send automated email reminders from SharePoint

The other day, someone asked me the following and it comes up enough that I thought sharing my answer might prove helpful for someone else.

alert

The Question

Hi Sean,

Just a quick question, can SharePoint send out automated email reminders when a lease contract end date is coming up for example?

The Answer

The answer is yes with a “*”.

Out of the box (built in/ready to go), SharePoint can be easily configured to fire off workflows (automation) and alerts based on 1 of 3 conditions:

  1. Someone asks for it to happen (human intervention)
  2. Someone creates something new
  3. Someone edits something

However, what you are asking for is to have something know what day it is and “come alive” because an event (contract end date is about to expire) is about to occur.

So, in situations like that, we can do 1 of a few things:

  1. Write code (ick)
  2. Use 3rd party add-ons (possible)
  3. Use Nintex with scheduled workflows (I LOVE Nintex, but it costs $$$ – very much worth it as you use SharePoint more and more but probably out of scope budget wise for this project)
  4. Recommended: Use Dashboards – rather than alert someone (via email), show “what’s coming up” on a dashboard – items are shown by date of next needing attention.  You’ll get to hear me rant about how we have too much email anyways and why this is a better approach to show “what’s on today, this week, this month” when we meet. 😉