# Chase overdue Smartsheet tasks with personal Slack nudges

> Every weekday at 9am, each person gets a friendly Slack message listing only their own late or nearly late project tasks.

- Workflow type: agent
- Services: Smartsheet, Slack
- Categories: Operations
- Published: 2026-08-09

## What it does

- Checks your active project sheets every weekday morning for tasks that are already past their due date or land within the next three days and are not marked complete.
- Sends each owner one personal Slack message with just their own items, oldest first, and a short line on why each one matters to the wider project.
- For anything more than five days late, asks for an update on the row itself, so the answer is recorded in the sheet instead of lost in a chat thread.
- Posts a short roll-up of the worst slippage to your project managers channel, and stays completely silent on mornings when nothing is overdue.

## What you'll need

- A Smartsheet account with access to the project sheets you want watched
- A Slack workspace, plus the channel your project managers use for delivery updates
- A due date column and an assignee contact column on each sheet
- A status column, so anything already marked complete is skipped

## Prompt

Every weekday at 9am, chase the work that is overdue or about to slip across my active Smartsheet project sheets, so I stop doing it by hand in standup.

Read each of my active project sheets with the Smartsheet Get Sheet operation. I will name the sheets I want in scope. For every sheet, keep only the rows where the due date has already passed or falls within the next three days, and the status is anything other than Complete. Skip parent and summary rows that only roll up their children.

Group the remaining rows by the person in the assignee contact column. Work out how many days late each row is by comparing its due date to today. Treat a row as badly slipped when it is more than five days past its due date.

For each owner who has at least one item, send them a Slack direct message with Send a Message. Find their Slack account by matching the email on their Smartsheet contact against List Users, then Open a Conversation to get the direct message channel. List only their own items, oldest first. For each item give the task name, the sheet it lives on, the due date and how late it is, plus one short line on why it matters to the wider project, drawn from what the sheet actually tells you: successor tasks waiting on it, a milestone it feeds, or a customer date it puts at risk. Write like a helpful teammate who knows the project, not a bot reading out a report. Never message an owner who has nothing overdue or nearly due.

For every row more than five days overdue, also raise a Smartsheet Create Update Request against that specific row, addressed to its assignee, so their answer lands back in the sheet rather than in a chat thread. Before creating one, check List Update Requests on that sheet and skip the row if a request is already open against it, so nobody gets the same formal ask every morning.

Finally, post a short roll-up to my project managers Slack channel with Send a Message: the handful of worst slippages across all sheets, who owns each one, how late it is, and which projects are most exposed. Keep it to a few lines. If nothing anywhere is overdue or close to slipping, do not post the roll-up and do not send any direct messages at all. A silent morning is the correct output.

## How to customize

- Change the timing: run it at 8am instead, only on Mondays, or twice a day during a crunch.
- Move the warning window: chase three days ahead by default, or a full week on longer programmes.
- Set when the formal update request fires, or switch it off and rely on the Slack nudge alone.

## Example output

Direct message to Priya:

Morning Priya, three of your items are late or about to be.

1. Vendor security review (Platform Migration), due 28 Jul, 12 days late. The cutover date cannot be booked until this clears.
2. Update training deck (Onboarding Refresh), due 4 Aug, 5 days late. Two trainers are waiting on it before next week's sessions.
3. Confirm data owner sign off (Platform Migration), due 11 Aug, due in 2 days. It is the last item before the go live checklist can close.

I have also sent an update request on the vendor review so your answer lands on the row itself. Shout if any of these need to move.

Project managers channel:

Worst slippage this morning: Vendor security review (Priya, 12 days late, blocking the Platform Migration cutover), Legal redlines (Tom, 9 days late), Warehouse survey (Dana, 7 days late). Platform Migration is the most exposed with 4 late items.

## FAQ

### Will people get pinged about the same task every single day?

Only while it is still late, and only ever as one grouped message per person per morning. Before asking for a formal update on a row, the workflow checks whether a request is already open on it and skips the row if so, so nobody gets the same ask repeated.

### What happens on a day when nothing is overdue?

Nothing is sent. No direct messages, no channel post. Staying quiet on the good days is the whole point, because daily bots that talk when there is no news get muted within a week.

### Does everyone see everyone else's late work?

No. Each person's direct message lists only their own items. The only shared view is the short roll-up posted to the project managers channel.

### Can it cover more than one project sheet?

Yes. You choose which sheets are in scope, and work is grouped by person across all of them, so someone with late tasks on three different projects still gets a single message.

### Do the replies end up back in Smartsheet?

For the worst cases, yes. Anything more than five days late also gets an update request against that row, so the person's answer updates the sheet directly rather than sitting in a Slack thread.

Use this prompt in General Input: https://www.generalinput.com/prompts/chase-overdue-smartsheet-tasks-with-personal-slack-nudges