Hi Monday Community! I’m hoping someone can help me with something that I assume is built in (it’s very basic) but I can’t find a path forward.
I have a last updated column on all of my items, as well as an assignee column. I want an automation that fires off a notification (reminder) if x number of days have passed on an item without an update.
Where can I find this?
Hello @erinthorn ,
You can handle your case with the Board Email Reports app — it includes a set of automations for item updates.
For example, you can set up an automation that sends you an XLS report listing items that haven’t been updated in the last X days.
You caninstall the app and test it for free — all automation recipes are available with no limit on the number of reports.
And here’s how to find the automation you need:
Which product (CRM/Work Management, etc) and level (Pro/Enterprise) do you have?
Desiree - www.thecleverclovers.com
I’m on Enterprise, but I can’t keep asking my manager for paid plugins. It seems like with every question I ask, that is the answer…. “YAPP” (Yet Another Paid Plugin). The community is great, always willing to help, and no shade on the devs that have found a business niche filling the holes that Monday has left. But it’s frustrating to management and has lead them to start asking if there’s another platform that just “does what we want out of the box”. 
If your last updated column is a date, you might be able to use an automation with the trigger “When date arrives” and set it up for X number of days after last updated. Here’s what it could look like in the native automations -
I’m not positive if it’ll trigger correctly since the last updated date will have already arrived… An alternative is instead of using last updated, having a next update due column- when an update is created, set next due to today and push X days, then when that date arrives the notification happens. Feels more complicated than it should though 
This set up of ‘next update due’/push is exactly what I’d do. Then add another automation of ‘When date(Next update due) arrives, then notify X’.
Desiree - www.thecleverclovers.com
I get it. In ‘most’ cases, you don’t need ‘YAPP’. A lot of devs here are just shooting their shot and hoping for the best. Many of their apps genuinely do make things easier, but that doesn’t mean you can’t achieve the same results with the tools you already have. It just takes a bit of upfront work to set things up right.
Desiree - www.thecleverclovers.com
This is a really useful idea! Automating notifications for items that haven’t been updated in a set number of days can save a lot of manual tracking and help keep workflows on track. Curious what tools or platforms you’re using to set this up.
How do you mean? The example above I recommend using automations (which would be the automation center in monday)?
Thanks for all of the suggestions everybody, some of them may have worked but unfortunately I’ve run into a larger issue. Is there really no way to have “Last Updated” recognize “Updates” (comments) as an update?
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills here.
For our org, adding updates/comments are the most basic and fundamental form of activity on an item. Without this functionality the usefulness of the “Last Updated” column is severely degraded (maybe worthless). Developers are (usually) updating their progress daily/every few days via “Updates”, and since “Last Updated” ignores these, it gives the impression that there’s no activity happening. This is hugely problematic. I can understand that some orgs may only want to track when fields change (and that should be an option as well), but to have a field called “Last Updated” ignore the field that they literally call “Updates”…. this is now at the top of my “who in the world is making these decisions?!” list.
But maybe I’m wrong? Maybe there’s a different field I should be using? 
See the Comment from Maddie on Oct 30. If you replace your "last updated” column with a date column you can set the date with a update (comment). Feel free to reach out if you want more details, happy to walk through it .
HI Eric,
There’s also the issue of workflows showing as last updated - on a lot of our boards I am the last updated person as I have daily automations running to automatically set when items are late, critically late etc
There may be a way to not include these in updates - I just havent found it yet 
Is this native or marketplace app?
Hello Shelley,
It’s a modestly priced app on the monday.com marketplace.
