Wednesday, September 03, 2008

SharePoint Reminder - Tickler System

OK, I know you really smart SharePoint people won't even have to think about this one. But I thought about my user's application needs for a good 10-15 minutes before I came up with this one. So for the really smart ones, this is no use, but for anybody not feeling quite that sharp, maybe you can save half that think time (you still had to google "sharepoint reminder" and find this post!).

So this is really simple. All you need to do is:

  1. Have a reminder date (not necessarily the due date). This can be a calculated field, based on due date (like =[Expiration Date]-30).
  2. Create a reminder view that filters based on the reminder date (is less than or equal to today).
  3. Use an alert or an RSS feed (now that was easy).

This thing does not need to be any particular kind of list or library. I know it's a brain dead simple solution, but if you were having a mental block, maybe this will help.

5 comments:

  1. Anonymous1:02 PM

    In creating the filter for the reminder view ("is less than or equal to todays date"), what is the formula I can write to represent "todays date" without entering the actual date? (b/c I don't want to have to update the date everyday!).

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  2. Just put in TODAY.

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  3. Anonymous1:54 PM

    Thanks - I had tried that but got a prompt saying that the "filter value is not in a supported date format". My reminder column was set up to expect a date - tried changing it to a single line of text, number, etc and those did not work either. What might I be doing wrong?

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  4. I know I have had issues getting some of these to work too. This last one worked fine the first time. Everything is a date and time field. I have an expiration date, and a reminder date (=[Expiration Date]-30).

    You might have to get out your SharePoint hammer (you use it on yourself and your computer).

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  5. Anonymous4:34 AM

    to Anonymous: just put "[TODAY]"

    ReplyDelete