Color Coding Sharepoint Date Fields For Expiration Alerts

Why Color Code Expiration Dates?

Color coding expiration dates in SharePoint enables users to quickly visually identify items needing review or action. Using background colors to highlight dates provides an at-a-glance status indicator that focuses attention on impending and passed due items. This saves time over reading individual dates and makes it easy to scan for items needing priority action.

Applying green, yellow, orange and red conditional formatting to dates and times fields allows for quick visual review of status. Users can instantly focus on documents expiring soon rather than those still active. The contrasting colors also help items stand out when rapidly scanning long lists or libraries for things needing attention.

Setting Conditional Formatting Rules for Color Coding

Conditional formatting in SharePoint allows rules to be created that apply selected color coding to items meeting defined criteria. Typically this would involve comparing the value of date or date/time columns to the current day. Items with dates before today or within set future periods could have colors applied to highlight status.

For example, a common conditional formatting criteria for expiration alerts would be to format items red where the expiration date value is less than today. This would instantly highlight all expired items. Likewise, additional rules could color code items expiring up to 7 days from today orange, up to 15 days yellow, and further out green. This color scale indicates both expired and impending expirations by relative date periods.

When creating the rules, background fill colors need to be selected to provide the visual contrast for quick flagging of status. Bright shades of red, orange, yellow and green work best over the default white background. Conditional formatting rules can apply colors to the entire row in a list or library or just to the specific date field itself.

Color Coding for Different Review Periods

Establishing defined review periods provides a simple way to prioritize expiration alerts through color coding. Example thresholds could include:

• Green: Expiring in more than 30 days – Active
• Yellow: Expiring in 15-30 days – Review Soon
• Orange: Expiring in 8-15 days – Review Asap
• Red: Expiring in less than 7 days – Past Due

The specific numbers of days can be adjusted as desired to meet review requirements. However having 4 periods (green, yellow, orange, red) works well for quick visual flagging of status and attention prioritization based on relative expiration timeframes.

Example Code for Conditional Formatting Rules

Here is example JSON code that could be used in SharePoint online for conditional formatting expiration date rules:

{
    "elmType": "div",
    "style": {
        "background-color": "red",
         "display": "inline"
    },
    "attributes": {
        "class": "ms-bgColor-redDark--span"
    },
    "children": [
        {
            "elmType": "span",
            "style": {
                "display": "inline-block",
                "padding": "0 4px"
            },
            "attributes": {
                "iconName": "DateTime"
            }
        }
    ]
}

This would apply a red background color to any items where the ExpireDate field value is before today. Similar code could be added for the other date thresholds and colors.

Make sure to test code across different browsers and devices to ensure the formatting displays as expected. Notes on common compatibility issues are below.

Additional Tips for Effective Expiration Alerts

Using color coded conditional formatting on date fields provides a quick and easy way to highlight expiration status visible at a glance. Some additional tips to make this even more effective include:

• Add metadata columns identifying owners to facilitate follow up
• Configure email alerts to notify responsible parties
• Link expiring records to renewal processes or related items
• Provide tagging on priorities and required actions

Combining colorful visual indicators on the records themselves with automated notifications and clear next steps can help ensure critical expiration dates do not get overlooked.

Summary and Benefits

In summary, color coding important date fields in SharePoint with conditional formatting rules enables simple visual review of expiration and renewal status. At a glance, users can quickly scan for and focus attention on past due and soon to expire items needing their action.

Key benefits this provides include:

• Enables quick visual status checks to focus user attention
• Makes impending and passed due dates clearly evident
• Improves compliance through timely renewals and reviews
• Requires minimal setup through SharePoint formatting tools

Color coded indicators highlight priority items and saves users time over pulling individual dates and manually comparing them. By leveraging conditional formatting, SharePoint libraries and lists can communicate important status and pending actions through easy to interpret visual cues.