Power Automate: Reminder for expired SharePoint items

Many BI teams use SharePoint lists to manage projects, tasks or data. However, it can be difficult to manually track which items have expired or are about to expire. In this article you will learn how to set up an automatic reminder for expired SharePoint items using Power Automate, so you can take timely action and your processes continue to run smoothly.

What you need

• A SharePoint list with a date column containing the due date of items

• Power Automate connector for SharePoint

• An email connector (for example Outlook) to send reminders

Step 1: Set up the trigger on a scheduled interval

The first step is to create a flow that periodically checks for expired items. Use the “Recurrence” trigger in Power Automate for this. This sets how often the flow runs, for example daily at 8 AM.

In the Power Automate portal go to “New flow” and choose “Scheduled - Recurrence”. Set the frequency to daily and the time at which the flow should start.

Step 2: Retrieve SharePoint items with a filter on due date

Add an action with the connector “SharePoint - Get items”. Select the correct site and list. Use the OData filter query to retrieve only items whose due date is less than or equal to today, for example:

DueDate le '@{utcNow('yyyy-MM-dd')}'

This filters the list on items that expired today or earlier. This prevents you from unnecessarily retrieving all items.

Step 3: Send a reminder by email

Use the action “Outlook - Send an email (V2)” to send a reminder. Add an “Apply to each” loop to send an email for each expired item. In the email you can use dynamic content such as the title of the item and the due date.

Example subject: “Reminder: SharePoint item ’@{items(‘Apply_to_each’)?[‘Title’]}’ has expired”

In the body you can include details and add a link to the item.

Tips & common mistakes

• Always use a filter query when retrieving SharePoint items to improve performance.

• Check that the date column in SharePoint has the correct date format.

• Test the flow first with a small dataset to prevent too many emails from being sent.

• Make sure the email recipients clearly know what action they need to take.

Example use case

A BI team uses a SharePoint list to track project deadlines. With this flow, project managers automatically receive an email when a deadline has passed, so they can immediately take corrective action. This prevents delays and increases efficiency.

Conclusion

With this simple Power Automate flow you automatically keep track of expired SharePoint items and send timely reminders. This improves collaboration and prevents important tasks from being overlooked. You set this up easily via the Power Automate portal and immediately see results in your daily work.

Our tip: Always test your flow first with a manual trigger before enabling it on a production dataset. This prevents errors from repeating on large amounts of data.