Late tasks nobody notices: setting up late alerts

Short answer: tasks go late quietly because nothing tells anyone they are late. Fix it in two parts. First, make an overdue view of your SharePoint list so late items are easy to see. Second, run a scheduled Power Automate flow that sends each owner one summary message a day. One message per owner is the key. Many messages get ignored.

At a glance

Swipe sideways to see all columns.

Item	Number	What it means for you
List view threshold	5,000 items	A view or query that must read more than this many items can be blocked. Filter first.
Lookup and person columns in one view	12	Owner is a person column. Each person or lookup column counts toward this limit.
Items in one list	30 million	A task list will not come near this. Size is not your main worry.
SharePoint calls per connection	600 every 60 seconds	A flow that sends one message per owner stays far below this on a small team.
Items one Apply to each loop handles	5,000 on Microsoft 365 plans, 100,000 on Power Automate Premium	Looping over late items has a cap. Filter to late, open items before the loop.

What it looks like when tasks go late silently

A task has a due date. The date passes. Nothing happens. No one is told, and the item sits in the list looking like every other item.

Here is how this shows up in a small team:

A customer asks about something that was promised last week. Nobody knew it was open.
A manager finds a late item by accident while looking for something else.
Two people each think the other one is handling it.
The team lead keeps a private list and checks it by hand every Friday.
People stop trusting the list, so they stop updating it. Then it gets worse.

What it costs, in plain words

A late task rarely fails loudly. The cost is smaller things that add up. A customer waits longer than you said. A renewal or deadline is missed and you pay for it. Someone spends time searching for the status of a job. A lead spends part of every week chasing people instead of doing their own work.

You can measure this without special tools. For one month, count how many tasks were finished after their due date, and how many days late each one was. Also count how many were found late by a person instead of by the list. Those two numbers show the size of the problem for your team. Do not guess. Count.

What you need

A SharePoint list with at least these columns: the item name, Owner (a person column), Due date (a date column) and Status (a choice column, for example Open, Done, Dropped).
Microsoft Power Automate, which comes with many Microsoft 365 plans. Which flow features your plan includes depends on your license, so check with your admin.

If you do not have a list yet, see "Replace a spreadsheet tracker with a SharePoint list". This guide assumes the list exists.

Part 1. Build an overdue view

A view is a saved way of showing the same list. An overdue view shows only the items that are late and still open.

Open your list in SharePoint.
Select the current view name at the top right, then choose Edit current view, or create a new view first and then edit it. Exact names may differ in your version.
Scroll to the Filters section and select "Show items only when the following is true".
Add a statement: Due date is less than [Today].
Add a second statement: Status is not equal to Done. Add another for Dropped if you use that status.
Sort by Due date, oldest first, so the worst item is on top.
Select OK to save.
Optional: make late items show in red with column formatting. Select the Due date column heading, then Column settings, then Format this column. Microsoft's example colors a date red when it is before the current date. Exact names may differ.

An important caveat. Microsoft says you cannot use [Today] or [Me] when you filter from a column header. You must use the classic view editor (Edit current view, then Filters). In practice, "is not equal to" and blank filters are also easiest to set there. So build this view in Edit current view, not by clicking a column heading.

Microsoft says the classic editor lets you add up to 10 filter statements.

A second caveat. Do not try to make a "Days late" calculated column that uses today's date. SharePoint blocks [Today] in calculated column formulas. Use the view filter for this, and let the flow do any date math.

Also name the view clearly, for example "Overdue". Put a link to it on your team page or in your Teams channel so people open it.

Part 2. Send one summary per owner, once a day

The view helps only if someone looks at it. The flow brings the late items to the owners.

The goal is simple: each owner gets one message a day that lists their own late items, and nothing if they have none.

H3: Create the scheduled flow

Sign in to Power Automate at make.powerautomate.com.
Select My flows, then the Cloud flows tab, then Create from blank. Exact names may differ.
Select Add a trigger, search for Recurrence, and select it.
Set Interval to 1 and Frequency to Day.
Pick your Time zone from the dropdown and set the hour you want the message to arrive, for example early morning on workdays.

Microsoft explains these settings, including the Time zone field and the start time format, on its scheduling page: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/run-scheduled-tasks. If you choose the Week frequency instead, you can pick the days of the week, which is one way to skip weekends.

H3: Get the late items

Add a SharePoint action named Get items and point it at your list. With the default options, Get items returns only 100 items. Open Advanced options, set Top Count to the number of rows you need (up to 5,000), and turn on Pagination in the action settings for a larger list.
In Filter Query, enter a filter that matches your late, open items. This field uses an OData filter. Microsoft's connector page describes it as "An ODATA filter query to restrict the entries returned". Filtering here, at the source, is better than fetching every item and filtering afterward.
Test the filter on a few items before you trust it. The exact text depends on your column names.

One filter that often works: DueDate lt '@{utcNow()}' and Status ne 'Done'. Use your column's internal name, which may differ from the name you see.

H3: Send ONE message per owner

This is the part most people get wrong. If you put the message inside a loop over every late item, each owner gets one message per item. Ten late items means ten messages. People then mute the messages.

One way to start:

Collect the list of distinct owners from the late items.
For each owner, build one message that lists only that owner's late items: item name, due date and a link to the item.
Send that single message through Outlook or Teams. If Teams suits you, the guide "Post to Teams when a SharePoint list item changes" covers sending to Teams.
If an owner has no late items, send nothing.

Group the items first, then send. Do not send inside the item loop. The exact steps depend on the actions you choose and the shape of your data, so build and test with two or three owners before you turn it on for everyone.

H3: Know the limits

Microsoft publishes flow limits at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/limits-and-config. A team tracker with a few hundred open items will not come near them.

What to avoid

Do not send one message per late item. Send one summary per owner.
Do not alert on every item. Alert on late and open items only. If done items trigger messages, people stop reading.
Do not build the overdue view from a column heading. [Today] will not work there. Use Edit current view.
Do not use a calculated column for "days late". SharePoint blocks [Today] in formulas.
Do not leave the Owner column optional. An item with no owner gets no message. Make Owner required, or add a second view for items with no owner and check it weekly.
Do not treat a view as a lock. Views are not security. Anyone with access to the list can change the filter or see the items. If some items must stay private, use list permissions instead.
Do not alert people about work that was dropped on purpose. Give people a Dropped status and filter it out.
Do not forget the Title column. It is required by default in a new list. Rename it to something like "Task", or turn off Require for it, so people are not asked for a title that means nothing.
Do not send alerts to the whole team about one person's items. It creates blame, not action.

Check that it works

Add a test item with a due date yesterday and Status Open. It should appear in the Overdue view.
Change the status to Done. It should leave the view.
Run the flow by hand once. Confirm the owner gets one message with the right items.
Add a second late item for the same owner. Confirm they still get only one message.
Check the flow run history the next morning, and fix any failed runs.

Guides that use this setup

These guides each show late alerts in one kind of work. This guide covers the setup once, so they point here.

Honest limits

Alerts do not finish the work. They make late work visible, and visible is the point. If people get a daily message and still do nothing, the problem is workload or priorities, not the flow. Also, a flow that fails without anyone knowing is just another silent problem. Check the run history on a regular schedule, and tell one person that it is their job to watch it. Microsoft turns off a flow that fails every run for 14 days, so make sure someone gets the failure emails.

When to get help

You can build all of this yourself in Microsoft 365. If you would rather have it built and tested for your team, I do that. A tracker like this is a fixed price: $5,000 for one, built in 2 weeks. See "What a SharePoint tracker costs". Bring one example of the problem to a free call.

See a working one with made-up data: Delayed Shipments demo

Tell me what's still manual

I am Al Davies. I run 250 High Street LLC and build SharePoint trackers and Power Automate flows for operations teams. I work remotely. The first call is free, and I will not try to sell you anything.

See trackers I built: Tools I built

FAQ

Updated 2026-10-27.

Why does my overdue view show nothing, or show everything?

Check that you built the filter in Edit current view, not from a column heading. The [Today] keyword does not work from a column heading. Then check that the Due date column is a date column and that your Status filter matches your real status words.

Can I use a calculated column to flag late items instead of a view?

No, not with today's date. SharePoint blocks [Today] in calculated column formulas. Use a view filter, or let the flow compare dates each day.

Will the owner get a message when their item is not late yet?

Not from this flow. This one sends only for late, open items. To warn people earlier, see "Send a reminder before a due date in a SharePoint list".

Do I need a paid Power Automate license?

It depends on your Microsoft 365 plan and on the actions you use. Check with your admin before you build. Do not assume.

Is an overdue view private to the owner?

No. A view is a way of showing items, not a way of protecting them. Anyone with access to the list can see the items. Use list permissions if some items must be private.