Automatic reminder and overdue notifications for plan tasks

Dear team,

Summary

Plan tasks have defined start and due dates, but users are not automatically notified when a task is approaching its due date or becomes overdue. Reminders can currently be sent manually by the plan owner.

Plans therefore provide the information about when an action is due, but do not actively notify the responsible user when action is required.

Current situation

Dates and task status are visible in the plan, but approaching or missed due dates do not automatically trigger a notification.

Plan owners and co-owners therefore have to monitor the plan and manually follow up with contributors or approvers. In larger planning processes, delays may only become visible when someone actively checks the plan or contacts the responsible user.

This makes the existing due-date functionality less operational than it could be.

Requested enhancement

Provide automatic reminder and overdue notifications for plan tasks based on their due dates and current task status.

The function should:

• allow automatic notifications to be enabled or disabled per plan and/or task

• allow the owner to define one or more reminder points before the due date, for example 1 day before

• automatically notify the responsible user when a configured reminder point is reached

• automatically notify the responsible user when a task becomes overdue

• optionally send recurring overdue reminders while the task remains open

• notify the user who is currently responsible for the required action, for example the contributor for an input task or the approver for an approval task

• use the existing plan notification channel (currently email)

• respect the current task ownership and assignment

• stop automatic reminders once the required task action has been completed

• not replace the existing manual reminder functionality

The notification should be triggered based on the combination of task status, due date and current responsibility, rather than simply sending an email at a fixed date.

Example

A task has a due date of Friday.

• Thursday → automatic reminder to the responsible user

• Friday → task reaches its due date

• Monday → if the task is still open, an overdue notification is sent

• If the task is completed → no further automatic reminders are sent

The exact reminder schedule should be configurable by the plan owner.

Business benefit

Due dates in Plans become operational rather than being purely informational.

Automatic reminders reduce the administrative effort for plan owners and co-owners, reduce manual follow-up, and provide contributors and approvers with a clear signal when action is required.

This is particularly valuable in larger planning processes where many tasks are executed in parallel and delays can otherwise remain unnoticed.

It also makes Plans better suited for recurring operational processes such as month-end close, forecasting and budgeting.

Expected result

A plan owner or co-owner can enable automatic task reminders and define when they should be sent.

When a task reaches a configured reminder point, the currently responsible user receives an automatic notification.

When a task becomes overdue, the responsible user receives an overdue notification without requiring a manual action by the plan owner.

The existing manual reminder remains available when an owner wants to send an additional or immediate reminder.

Out of scope

• No change to submit/approve rules

• No change to task state or workflow logic

• No replacement of the existing manual reminder functionality

• No change to Plan Announcements

• No change to system-level thread or infrastructure alerts

• Custom email layouts and notification templates are a separate request

With best regards,
Vitalij