How to know if a document (lying in SharePoint Document Library) review is due…

I came across an interesting scenario when I was reading stackoverflow.com. Here is the scenario:

“In sharepoint 2010 I need to be able to set a review date on a document and be emailed when this review date is reached. Is this possible?”

I thought of researching on this and found a no-code solution for this. Please review my answer to above post. I will continue to monitor above post if I find a better answer.. But for now here is what I think:

 

To make it the most robust solution, I would suggest to customize the Alerts framework of SharePoint. SharePoint allows following customizations (as documented here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb802949.aspx)

• Adding or removing buttons from the alert e-mails.
• Changing the cascading style sheet used to format e-mail alerts. This is particularly useful for sites that want to create a consistent appearance.
• Changing the latency of "immediate" alerts by adjusting the default timer interval.
• Override the templates used to create e-mail or SMS alerts, either by creating a new template or by setting the SPList.AlertTemplate property.
• Creating custom filters by using Collaborative Application Markup Language (CAML) queries in the element in the alert templates.
• Programmatically setting or changing the mobile messaging service provider (MSP) that forwards SMS alerts to mobile telephones.
• Adding custom event handlers that respond when a user creates or modifies an alert. Also, custom handlers that respond to the alert sending event can be created.
• Programming the alerts framework by using the SharePoint Foundation object model. For more information about how to customize alerts programmatically, see SPAlert.

If your list supports sending alerts based on a View, you are lucky, A NO CODE SOLUTION is already there for you. You can create a View with filter condition like "DueDate is equal to [Today]" (and possibly "AssignedTo is equal to [Me]) and then subscribe to any changes to that view.

If you end up with custom alert filter, following links may get you started: http://egrimmett.wordpress.com/2008/01/17/custom-alerts-part-2-filters/

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sharepointdeveloperdocs/archive/2007/12/07/customizing-alert-notifications-and-alert-templates-in-windows-sharepoint-services-3-0.aspx