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We're using SharePoint Foundation 2010. We do ~not~ have workflows. That fact prevents the answers given here from working for me. So, for a close-but-not-duplicate-question, I'd like to pose this challenge that I've run into:

We have a number of team meetings and assignments that are listed in the SharePoint calendar for the group. We would like to be able to send out meeting reminders to the team, but the only alerts that I can find are for when items in the calendar CHANGE. I've not found an alert that would just go out, say, fifteen minutes before each meeting. Is that functionality built into SharePoint Foundation? Am I missing it?

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  • Side note: I think SharePoint won't be accurate enough for times under 5 minutes. – Christophe Jun 25 '12 at 17:06
  • Understood. They're not expecting an exchange server...more like a 15-30 minute warning to do a last check on document updates before an in-person meeting. So that +-5 minutes accuracy won't be an issue. Good to know, though. – dwwilson66 Jun 25 '12 at 17:37
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Usually speaking, a simple workflow could be set up, in your case, I am still unsure about why you cannot. You still have a few options, depending on how technical you want to get:

  1. Have users subscribe to your calendar in their outlook. Outlook would then remind them.

  2. Write a timerjob that sits on the server and runs every night and schedules reminders to be sent for that day.

  3. Write a listener outside of SharePoint to pull in the calendar data. You could even use powershell.

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  • I've been told by our IT department that WorkFlows (even simple ones) are not part of OOTB Foundation. Is this true from your experience? How would I be able to verify this? I'm pretty technical, but since this is a user-area project, I'm severly limited on "development" – dwwilson66 Jun 25 '12 at 16:19
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    @dwwilson66 Workflows can be set up in SharePoint Foundation via SharePoint Designer. If your IT department has blocked SharePoint Designer (their decision) then you are out of luck. – Christophe Jun 25 '12 at 17:00
  • @Christophe I have Designer, I'll do some digging to see if it's doable or blocked. Thanks! – dwwilson66 Jun 25 '12 at 17:35
  • Workflows are available ootb, you just need the tools to access them, aka sharepoint designer. – Eric Alexander Jun 25 '12 at 20:18
  • Theres a list of options here. Workflow is one of them (obv. not for you) but also things like custom timers jobs and 3rd party software - stackoverflow.com/questions/529045/… – Ryan Jun 26 '12 at 7:11

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