Posts Tagged ‘Reminder’

New version of SharePoint Reminder – corrects a problem caused by Chrome v37

Date:October 27th, 2014 Author: Tags: , , , ,
Category: SharePoint Reminder Comments:0 ;

A new version (1.9.6) of Reminder for SharePoint which enables date based email Alerts  is available.

The main change in this version is to make it compatible with Google Chrome v37. Controversially Google removed a feature (showModalDialog) that has been included in most browsers since 1994 and is still part of the latest HTML5 specification.

We’ve also added

  • Improved compatibility with custom master pages or other controls that use jQuery and the ability stop reminder including jQuery on a page that already has it. (options under the Support tab).
  • Reduced storage requirements for state data to support large lists
  • Configurable Web Part processing timeouts (for large lists)
  • A correction to an error that occurred if you use List and View name with angle brackets in the title.

To upgrade simply download and install the latest trial version – your license key will be picked up during the upgrade and all your settings will be saved.

Warning – Once you’ve upgraded to v1.9.6 or above you can’t rollback to a version older than 1.9.6.

Contract renewals in Office 365

Date:April 30th, 2013 Author: Tags: , , , , , ,
Category: Reminder 365, SharePoint Alert, SharePoint Online / 365 / Cloud Comments:0 ;

Reminder 365

Remembering to check when contracts are up for renewal can be a chore. Instead of waiting for someone to nag you about it, beat them to it with your own monthly reminder e-mail.

Here’s how you’d set it up

Select your list and view:

Choose list

Then choose when you’d like the e-mails sent. Here we’ve set them up for the first Monday of each month:

Pick schedule

Next choose “Items due before next check” and the column with the renewal date in. This will send e-mails for renewals due this month:

Send alerts for

Give the e-mails a subject and some explanation in the header. We’ve chosen to end the e-mails to HR and copy in the manager:

Email

Give it a name, save it, and that’s it! Reminder 365 will start delivering e-mails like this every month:

Example email

 

signup

Sales follow-ups in Office 365

Date:April 30th, 2013 Author: Tags: , , , , , ,
Category: Reminder 365, SharePoint Alert, SharePoint Online / 365 / Cloud Comments:0 ;

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If you’ve got a list of potential or current customers, it’s likely you’ll want to keep in regular contact with them (especially in the case of sales leads). So skip making checking the list every morning, and just get a summary e-mail of today’s contacts. That’s less time logging in or messing around trying to use SharePoint from a mobile phone, and more time making calls.

Here’s how you’d set it up

Select your list and view:

Choose list

Then choose when you’d like the e-mails sent:

Pick schedule

Next choose "Items due before next check" and the column with the next contact date in (this will send e-mails for contacts due today):

Send alerts for

Then give the e-mails a subject, header, and a motivational footer like ours:

 Email

Above we’ve chosen to send e-mails to the assigned Agent, CC-ing the manager. Give it a name, save it, and that’s it! Reminder 365 will start delivering e-mails like this every morning:

 Example email

 

signup

Meeting reminders in Office 365

Date:April 30th, 2013 Author: Tags: , , , , , ,
Category: Reminder 365, SharePoint Alert, SharePoint Online / 365 / Cloud Comments:0 ;

Reminder 365

Want to send reminders of all your meetings, without having to manually set them up in Outlook? Reminder 365 can send all attendees a summary of all of their meetings today first thing in the morning.

Here’s how you’d set it up

Select your calendar and the All Events view:

 Choose list

 

Then choose when you’d like the e-mails sent:

Pick schedule

Next choose "Items due before next check" and the meeting start time:

Send alerts for

Then give the e-mails a subject (and optional header/footer), and choose to send them to the attendees:

Email

Just name your alert, save it, and that’s it! Everyone now gets meeting reminders like the below every day: It’s that easy.

 Example email

 

signup

Reminder 365: Date-based alerts for Office 365

Date:April 26th, 2013 Author: Tags: , , , , , ,
Category: SharePoint Alert, SharePoint Online / 365 / Cloud, SharePoint Reminder Comments:0 ;

Reminder 365 is now available! Sign up today for your free account!

What is it?

Our Reminder web part has been extremely popular for those using the on-premises version of SharePoint but its not been available for those of you on Office 365 / SharePoint Online. Now we have a version of Reminder especially for SharePoint Online customers.

Reminder 365 builds on SharePoint Online’s built-in alerts, so you can get more from Office 365:

tick Create alerts for due or overdue items
tick Customize alert e-mails
tick Send daily, weekly, or monthly summaries
tick Free to use: Upgrade if and when you want
tick No installation: Just sign up and go

What’s it for?

Here are some of the things our beta testers used Reminder 365 for:

Why not see what it could do for you:

signup

How to configure email alerts to review Documents in SharePoint

Date:March 13th, 2013 Author: Tags:
Category: General, SharePoint Reminder Comments:2 ;

I am going to walk through an example showing how you can use our SharePoint Reminder software to send out date based email alerts reminding authors to review and update old documents.

Perhaps you’ve got contracts that will expire at a certain time and need to be renewed. Perhaps you’ve got policies that need to be checked for accuracy at least once per year.

Reminder can help with this and many other scenarios requiring you to setup email alerts to be sent on certain dates – and it’s much easier than working with workflow.

Scenario 1 – Email to author asking for a document to be reviewed once per year.

In this simple example we’re just going to send out an email to an author if a document hasn’t been updated in a year.

Start with a standard SharePoint Document Library (or even a normal list with document attachments).

basic-document-library
(These screenshots are from SharePoint 2013 but Reminder can work with any on-premises version of SharePoint and if you’re using SharePoint Online / Office 365 then you can use our Reminder 365 product).

Create a new wiki page (or web part page if you’re using SharePoint 2007) somewhere in the same site. The location is not important as long as it’s in the same site.

Add a new web part to the page (Insert > Web Part > Miscellaneous > Reminder)

Edit the web part and in the toolpane (the settings on the right) configure it like this :-

Set the watch list to Documents (or whatever your document library or list is called)

Set the Email To : Created By

Tip – you don’t have to use the Created By column (who is the first person to upload the document) you could use

  • Use the Modified By column (the last person to edit the document)
  • Add a “Owner” field as a Person or Group field into the document library and set Reminder to send to that
  • Hard code a person or distribution address into Reminder such as “doc-reviewers@yourcorp.com”

reminder-config-watch-list

Setup a subject and message – remember you can include details from the document library such as [Name] and [Modified By] and any other metadata fields from the list. The email will also contain a link to the document record.

reminder-message-subject

Under Send When set the Reminder email to be sent when the Modified field is Overdue by 12 months – this will trigger an email when a document’s last modified date is a year old.
(If someone edits a document half way through a year the alert email will be ‘moved back’ to be a full 12 months since the last modification)
 send-when-modified
 In the Send Email section set this list to be checked at 7am every weekday (or whatever makes sense to your organisation).  send-when

And that’s it! In a years’ time the person who created the document will get emails like this – notice the ‘mail merge’ of information from the document library / list being put into the subject and message

document-review-email

Scenario 2 – Email to an Account Manager to ensure a contract is renewed.

Building up on the previous example we’re going to

  • Add an Owner field into the document library as who initially uploads a document may not be the person who is later responsible for it.
  • Add a Review Date field – just sending an email in a year’s time isn’t precise enough for our well organised office!

So add these fields using Library > Create Column

  • Owner is a Person or Group Field
  • Expiration Date is a Date and Time field and defaults to a Calculated Value of [Today]+365 so by default documents are due for review 1 year after they were created, but this can be changed

(Note – you can use [Today] in default values and filters, just not calculated columns!)

It will look something like this :-

modified-document-library
The setup for Reminder is almost identical to the previous example but

Email To : Owner

Subject : The document [Name] is due for review on [Review Date]

Send When : Review Date is Due Soon within 5 days.

 

review-date-due-soon

And you’re done! 5 days before the Review Date comes around an email will be sent to the Document Owner.

Further ideas

  • You can have multiple Reminders for different time periods, e.g.
    • The first email 6 months after it was created, the second 24 months after or
    • One email 2 weeks before a review date saying “Due Soon” and another email once the Review Date has passed by a month saying “Overdue – get on with it!” – let the  computer be the team nag!
  • Email CC – perhaps the ‘due soon’ email can go to just the document owner but the “overdue” email can be cc’d to the team leader
  • Dynamic Review Dates – perhaps HR documents need to be reviewed every year, but health and safety documents very 2 years. You can set different rules and emails by setting up Views to filter different types of documents and setup different Reminder web parts for different views.

Download the free 30 day trial and get started today!

Reminder web part is now compatible with SharePoint 2013

Date:March 7th, 2013 Author: Tags: , ,
Category: General, SharePoint Alert, SharePoint Reminder Comments:0 ;

Our Reminder web part (which gives date based “Due Soon” and “Overdue” email alerts) is now compatible with SharePoint 2013 as of version 1.8.0

If upgrading from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2013 simply perform the upgrade then install the latest version – your old settings and license key will be picked up. Full instructions for upgrading Reminder to SharePoint 2013 are in the online manual.

SharePoint Reminder - date based email alerts

Reminder is the last of our commercial web parts to be made SharePoint 2013 compatible.

Reminder 365 – Overdue alerts for Office 365

Date:March 6th, 2013 Author: Tags: , , , , , , ,
Category: SharePoint Alert, SharePoint Online / 365 / Cloud Comments:0 ;

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Reminder 365 is now in beta! Sign up now to try it for free:

Customisable and data-based alerts for Office 365 / SharePoint Online

What is Reminder 365?

Our new hosted product for Office 365 (aka SharePoint Online) that allows you to send alerts for:

  • Items that are due soon: Send a daily nag e-mail to task assignees
  • Overdue items: Let managers know what’s gone overdue this week
  • All items on a view: Get summaries every month of new documents

There’s no installation: Just sign up on the site and you’re good to go.

How much does it cost?

Reminder 365 is free during beta. Final pricing has not yet been decided.

How long will the beta last?

We intend to run the beta for between 3-6 weeks. So the sooner you start, the better!

Are there any perks to being a beta tester?

You get a chance to shape the product before it’s released to the general public. We’re not ruling out discounts for active beta testers, but since we haven’t finalised the pricing we don’t yet know what we’d be discounting!

I’ve got an idea, request, or bug I need to tell you about!

Please do! You can contact us at: support@pentalogic.net

 

Join the Reminder 365 beta!

Send email alerts when a document is left checked out

Date:May 28th, 2012 Author: Tags: , , , ,
Category: SharePoint Reminder Comments:2 ;

A new version of our Reminder web part for SharePoint has been released (v1.7.16) that allows you to send email alerts if a document is left checked out for a long time.

If you have document libraries that require check out before editing then you’ve undoubtedly been faced with the situation where documents have been left checked out – blocking other users from editing the document.

Reminder allows you to send email alerts after a period of time to ensure checked out documents are not forgotten about.

This example shows how to setup Reminder to send email alerts if something in a document library is left checked out for more than 12 hours.

SharePoint - email alerts when a document is left checked out

The manual contains other common scenarios such as email alerts when Task/Due and Overdue, simple helpdesk in SharePoint, enhanced SharePoint alerts and more.

You can download and upgrade to the latest version.

SharePoint Staff Vacation Planner Update – dealing with Public Holidays

Date:September 1st, 2011 Author: Tags: , , , ,
Category: PivotPoint Web Part, SharePoint Planner, SharePoint Reminder Comments:0 ;

Customers who use our SharePoint Staff Vacation Planner Toolkit often ask about the best way to deal with public holidays.  Public Holidays tend to affect the whole team.  So you want them clearly marked on your Vacation Planner dashboard, but you certainly don’t want to have to enter each public holiday for each team member as a separate event.  And you probably also don’t want to be firing off absence approval requests for each holiday either.

So here are our suggestions on the best way of handling Public Holidays within the SharePoint Staff Vacation Planner Toolkit.

First you need modify your list.  Go to list settings and open up your “Reason” field.  In addition to your existing reasons for absence add a new reason – Public Holiday.

Then open up the settings for your “Requested By” column and make sure you have “Allow Multiple Selections” checked.

Now you need to modify your Planner web part.

So, “Edit Shared Web Part” then, under your “Category”  picker, check the “split multiple selections box”.  This is key if you want to be able to create just one event for each public holiday but have it show up against each of your team members.

Now go down to the Planner Colors section of the Toolpart and update your color coding by column section to include an extra color code for your new Reason for absence that you created in your list – Public Holiday – I am going for a nice orange.

Now check your PivotPoint web part. For this to work you are going to need PivotPoint 2.1.4 or above.  Download it here if you don’t have it already (free to all PivotPoint v2 customers, or v1 customers with Premium Support). In the Toolpart make sure that in the “Split Multiple Values” dropdown you have chosen “Split Records”.  This will ensure that when we enter a 1 day public holiday for 4th of July, for example, 1 day gets entered against each team member in the pivot table.

Finally, before we start adding events, to ensure that we don’t accidentally fire off approval requests and notifications all over the place, access the Reminder web parts that you have set up and in the “Reminder Testing”  section at the bottom of the Toolpart enter your own email address so that any emails generated whilst you are adding the public holidays go to you.  This will be a better solution than simply switching the Reminders off as you work, as it will mean that if any “real” requests are submitted whilst you are working you will be able to redirect them, rather than them being lost.

Add a Public Holiday

So, from your Planner dashboard add a new item.  Let’s do 4th July. Set it up as an all day event.  Set yourself as “approved by”, you will need to approve the event before it will show up in people’s dashboards.  Now add your whole team to the “Requested By” field.  It’s easiest to do this using the Address Book.  Now ensure you have selected “Public Holiday” in your Reason field.  Approve the request.  Discard all the “Request approved” notifications that are redirected through to you.  And now you will see your public holiday, nicely marked against each of your team members.  Repeat as needed for all of your other public holidays, remove the redirect from your Reminder emails and then you can relax for another year!

I hope this helps you in using Vacation Planner.  If you have any questions or requests about the Vacation Planner we would love to hear them.