Forum Discussion
Trigger email based on columns of a list
I have a list with these 2 columns - Manager and Due Date. Does SharePoint provide OOB feature to send email to Manager when Due Date is the current date ?
Thanks for any help...
Hello,
Welcome to SharePoint, glad to hear you are new. To start up lets find out if you have permissions to accomplish this. Do you know if you have Full Control permissions to the site you are working on?
SharePoint workflows can be built if you have the proper permissions and you can use this Development tool that is free to download called SharePoint Designer. http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35491 - If you haven't used SharePoint designer I would recomend finding some training informaiton related to it before you begin.
Here is some technical documentation on SharePoint Designer 2013 https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/jj163986.aspx
Anyway here is a sample list I created to do this
List Columns: (type) (noted an asterisk * = required columns)
- Item Title (default single line of text)
- *Manager (people picker)
- *Due Date (Date column) ... Bonus! use the column validation section to make this date greater than or equal to today so it must be in the future.
- Formula: =[Due Date]>=TODAY()
- User Message: Due Date must be greater than or equal to today.
Open Designer > Open your site > Open your list & Create a new workflow that is associated with it.
workflow Logic:
IF Current Item: Due Date Greater than or equal to Today
Pause until Current Item: Due Date
Email Current Item: Manager
(end)
This is just a basic concept and you can always do more :-)
17 Replies
Any thoughts on leveraging tasks which can provide initial notifications and reminder e-mails? Saves you from writing code.
For on-premises SharePoint, you could use a community project I wrote a while ago as the foundation for what you want to achieve:
As the due date will only need to trigger an email once you could also condifer running PowerShell as a scheduled task. Simply schedule the PowerShell to scan through the list on a daily basis.
- Another additional option: run this schedule task as an Azure Web Job so you can program your stuff using .NET
As mentioned by Chris Gullicksen you need to use SharePoint designer workflow and condtion to wait until the due date and send email. You can also do the same using "Flow".
- You say that it can be done using "Flow". I looked for a sharepoint trigger to do it and didn't find it. What trigger would you use?
- Hello,
You would need to use SharePoint designer to make this work. The concepts is similar to how you explained it. Wait until Due Date then email the Manager. Just be sure the "Manager" field is a people picker field as that makes things easier when building your email.- Hi Chris,
It is working for "Pause Workflow Until Due Date". Will this pose any overhead to the SharePoint server when there are many workflows being paused till date which is very late ?
Please advise. Thank you.- Hello,
That is a very good question, perhaps some of the Microsoft folks could give you better details on it.
I couldn't find anything online saying there would be any issues with it. There are workflow timer jobs that keep everything in check so as long as everything is healthy related to your workflows there shouldn't be any issues that I can think of.
- hi Chris,
As I am very new to SharePoint, are you able to provide details / sample code on the how-to ?
Thank you.Hello,
Welcome to SharePoint, glad to hear you are new. To start up lets find out if you have permissions to accomplish this. Do you know if you have Full Control permissions to the site you are working on?
SharePoint workflows can be built if you have the proper permissions and you can use this Development tool that is free to download called SharePoint Designer. http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35491 - If you haven't used SharePoint designer I would recomend finding some training informaiton related to it before you begin.
Here is some technical documentation on SharePoint Designer 2013 https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/jj163986.aspx
Anyway here is a sample list I created to do this
List Columns: (type) (noted an asterisk * = required columns)
- Item Title (default single line of text)
- *Manager (people picker)
- *Due Date (Date column) ... Bonus! use the column validation section to make this date greater than or equal to today so it must be in the future.
- Formula: =[Due Date]>=TODAY()
- User Message: Due Date must be greater than or equal to today.
Open Designer > Open your site > Open your list & Create a new workflow that is associated with it.
workflow Logic:
IF Current Item: Due Date Greater than or equal to Today
Pause until Current Item: Due Date
Email Current Item: Manager
(end)
This is just a basic concept and you can always do more :-)
