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Reminder emails a day before for a Calendar Event

Today 11/19/2010 Friday, one of the Users requested that if they can get alerts or notifications for the upcoming calendar events and that they would like to get the notifications the day before the event.

To accomplish the above:

Add a custom field to the calendar called "Alert - 1 day".  Make it a calculated field with the calculation [StartTime]-1.  Make sure it is a date type.  I also specified date and time so the alert goes out exactly one day before, to the minute.
Then also add a custom field to the calendar called "Reminder Recipients".  Make it a people picker control and choose to show Email addresses and probably allow multiple selections too.

Next, open your site in SharePoint designer and create a workflow (New > Workflow) for the calendar. Set the workflow to automatically start when the event is created/changed.  I also created a workflow variable called "Recipients" of type string.   Then my workflow went like this:

If Alert - 1 day is greater than Today
Pause until Calendar:Alert - 1 day
then Set Variable: Recipients to Calendar:Reminder Recipients
then Email Variable: Recipients

Please see the screenshots below

Variable: Recipients to Calendar:Reminder Recipients
then Email Variable: Recipients

Please see the screenshots below

Basically, when creating a new event, the person specifies who they want the reminder to go to.  Then once the event is created, the workflow is automatically started.  The workflow assumes the event is in the future (The IF statement).  Then workflow just pauses until it reaches the date of the "Alert - 1 day" field that should contain the date of exactly 1 day before the event.  As soon as that date is reached, the workflow starts up again, gets the recipients that were specified and sends them an email.  In the workflow creation, you can customize the content of the email and even include calendar lookup values in the email.

Basically, when creating a new event, the person specifies who they want the reminder to go to.  Then once the event is created, the workflow is automatically started.  The workflow assumes the event is in the future (The IF statement).  Then workflow just pauses until it reaches the date of the "Alert - 1 day" field that should contain the date of exactly 1 day before the event.  As soon as that date is reached, the workflow starts up again, gets the recipients that were specified and sends them an email.  In the workflow creation, you can customize the content of the email and even include calendar lookup values in the email.

Note:

UPDATE: To get it to notify 1 hour prior, create the alert column the same way as the Alert - 1 day, except change 1 to 1/24 (1 hour):

=[Start Time]-1/24