March 11, 2008 at 8:48 am
I am currently trying to find a software package that would allow us to automatically send email messages to the people in our department to remind them of upcoming deadlines. The software has to:
- be multi-user
- allow the email reminders to be sent to 1 or more people
- allow more than 1 user to be able to enter the reminders
- preferably, it would work with Outlook and group calendars in Outlook
For example, a member of our office administration staff will enter a reminder at the beginning of a quarter for when a certain project is due. A week before the project is due, all relevant people on that project will receive an automated email message reminding them of the upcoming deadline (and put the fear of GOD in them to get it done on time :)).
I realize that we could develop a home-grown solution but we are looking for an off-the-shelf solution. 🙂
I just wanted to see if anyone out there has something that they use that they would recommend. Thanks in advance!
Norene Malaney
March 11, 2008 at 9:47 am
not sure what the best solution is here. I don't know of anything that specializes in this, but if you have Exchange, you can set up public calendars. Maybe one for each group.
Honestly if you have SQLMail working, a quick app with reminders, users, and groups might be the quickest solution. Add people in an out of groups, make a simple web page/app/set of queries to do the add/edit/delete for the reminders, and then send emails for alerts, an outlook link for changes. the Outlook calendar file isn't that complicated.
Or maybe someone here would build something like this! I think Notification Services did this, but it was a little complicated.
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March 11, 2008 at 9:56 am
Hi,
I'm not aware of anything off-the-shelf but it is easy enough to use SQLmail and SQL Server Agent to build a quick app. I've built one in 2000 (works in MSDE too for 'lite' versions) to send out data request emails. All you need for a really simple version is a table containing To, Cc, Subject, Body, a 'not mail before' datetime and sent flag. You then set up a sql agent job to run every 5, 10, however-many minutes and once the 'not mail before' datetime is exceed, a procedure to send the mail is executed.
If you set up a quick procedure to simplify the entry of data in to the table you can put a quick front-end on for people to set up the emails.
HTH,
Ade
March 12, 2008 at 7:00 am
Thanks for the responses - I do appreciate them. Yes, I agree that it would be easy to set up something using SQL. However, we don't have the resources right now to throw at this project ... that's why I was hoping for an "off the shelf" answe.
Norene Malaney
March 12, 2008 at 7:08 am
Maybe someone here wants to write one and open source it! Or make an article. 🙂
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March 27, 2008 at 9:26 am
Norene,
I am going to second Steve's recommendation of using Group Calendar's in Outlook. If you configure a shared Calendar for each Project you should be able to manage meetings, deadlines, reminders, etc. as you have described above.
We manage scheduling our conference rooms in a similar fashion. All employees can read the schedule for each conference room/calendar, but only a select few staff can actually created the appointments/reservations.
Regards,
"Key"
MCITP: DBA, MCSE, MCTS: SQL 2005, OCP
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