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February 17, 2009 11:20 AM

How to use Sharepoint's calendar to remind staff of ongoing project dates for multiple projects.

I'm using Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and need to implement a variable date solution for the following and I'm not sure how best to go about it:

Essentially this is Project Management, but with email reminders fromt he calendar:

-Project tracking of about 30 different projects
-Each project will have it's own timeline of dates starting from the initial "StartDate"
-A series of dated items.

a) Set future dates such as April 1, 2010 that trigger reminder emails 120, 90, 60, 30 days prior to the event as well as other fixed dates.
b) Sliding dates such as "every 30 days" for events that occur monthly, annually, etc
c) Manual add-in days for emergency or non-compliance with project specs that can be initiated and send reminders until compliance is met or emergency is over (Could be 24 hours, 48 hours, 30 days, etc)


So essentially I need calendar reminder "countdowns" as well as calendar tracking of unplanned events, as well as regularly scheduled reminders to email out to a group and possibly have the workflow change the "status" of a project based on the current state of the calendar reminders.

Am I looking for something 3rd party here or can this be done in Sharepoint Designer 2007 with a little direction?

Should I hire a 3rd party directly or using oDesk or eLance?

posted by emjay to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Lots of requirements here and I haven't gone through all of them but I bet you could get away with SharePoint Designer no-code workflows. Basically you will have a long running workflow (or series of workflows) that wake up each day and determine if it is a day to send and an e-mail and then go back to sleep. It is a bit awkward since the workflow is attached to the item rather than something external that is scheduled against all project items. At least in my mind it feels awkward.

If you have access to the SharePoint installation and have .Net development skills (or access to some) it is pretty easy to build scheduled jobs that just iterate through the list of projects and send reminders as necessary without the necessity of forcing your process and thinking into the SharePoint workflow model.
posted by mmascolino at 3:17 PM on February 17, 2009 [1 favorite]

You might want to check out Brightwork which has a pretty slick (but pricey) project management add-in for SharePoint.
posted by MCTDavid at 6:04 PM on February 17, 2009 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: mmascolino - Looking into some type of no-code workflow as the template that are available from MS and others are not quite the right fit.

mctdavid - perhaps Project Management isn't the best term to use, as it's an ongoing project that has no end date...just repeated events ad infinitum
posted by emjay at 5:58 AM on February 18, 2009

Response by poster: Well, to anyone who's followed this thread... it came down to me studying workflows and drafting my own process in SharePoint Designer, with a minor assist from a developer who I found that had done something similar before. Apparently there are many programming groups/companies out there who have complete solutions for Project Management out of the box, but the costs and licensing of these did not work for my project.

Good luck!
posted by emjay at 1:10 PM on March 9, 2009