A scheduled automation that runs six parallel checks against every active task in the system each morning, covering overdue tasks, tasks due tomorrow, tasks decaying without activity, tasks with no assignee, tasks with no due date, and tasks with no time estimate, then posts each violation to the appropriate client Slack channel so the team starts every day knowing exactly what's broken and what needs attention.
Project management systems are only as good as the discipline of the people using them. Your PM tool can track everything: assignees, due dates, time estimates, status changes. But only if someone actually fills those fields in. And only if someone notices when deadlines slip.
In practice, two categories of problems develop silently.
Things that should change your priorities. A task was due yesterday and nobody noticed. A task is due tomorrow and it hasn't started. A task hasn't been updated in over a week. It's sitting in someone's queue, forgotten, while the client assumes it's progressing. These aren't process failures. They're delivery risks. The kind that surface in client calls as awkward silences when the client asks, "What's the status on that thing I sent over last week?" and nobody has an answer. These need attention today.
Things that shouldn't exist. A task has no assignee, which means nobody owns it and nobody's working on it. A task has no due date, so it will never show up as overdue no matter how long it sits untouched. A task has no time estimate, so it can't be tracked against the client's budget, and the utilization monitoring that prevents billing overages is blind to it. These are process violations. They don't require immediate action, but every day they persist is a day the system is working with incomplete data. And incomplete data creates blind spots that compound into real problems.
The information to catch all of this already exists. Your data layer has the records. Your PM tool has the fields. The problem is that nobody has time to check six different conditions every morning across every client.
A PM managing eight accounts would need to open eight client workspaces, check six different conditions in each, and build a list of violations. That's 48 checks before they've had their coffee. So they don't. They check the one or two clients they're worried about, miss the task that slipped on the "easy" client, and discover the problem a week later in a client meeting. The PM isn't lazy. They're overwhelmed. And the checks that don't happen are where problems grow.
The data exists. The filters exist. What doesn't exist is the discipline to check everything, every morning, across every client. And that's not a people problem. It's a system problem.
The automation runs on a morning schedule, executing six checks simultaneously. A single run branches into six independent paths, each querying the data layer through a different pre-built filter. All six checks run in parallel, not one after another, so the full audit across every active task in the system completes in seconds.
Check 1: Overdue Tasks. Surfaces any task past its due date. For each one found, an alert posts to the client's Slack channel with the task name, due date, assignee, and a direct link. This is the most urgent check. An overdue task means a commitment is already broken.
Check 2: Tasks Due Tomorrow. Surfaces tasks with a due date one day away. Same format as the overdue alert, but this is the early warning. A 24-hour heads-up that gives the assignee and PM time to prepare, re-prioritize, or flag a blocker before the task becomes overdue. This check exists to prevent overdue tasks from happening in the first place.
Check 3: Decaying Tasks. Surfaces any task that hasn't been updated in seven or more days. This is the silent killer. A task that isn't overdue yet but has gone completely stale. No status changes, no comments, no time tracked. It's sitting in someone's queue, untouched. The alert includes the "Last Updated" timestamp so the PM can see exactly how long it's been dormant. The gap between the due date and the last update tells the whole story.
Check 4: No Assignee. Surfaces tasks that exist in the system with no one assigned. An unassigned task is nobody's responsibility. It will sit indefinitely because no one considers it their work. This check makes invisible tasks visible.
Check 5: No Due Date. Surfaces tasks without a due date. A task without a due date is invisible to every time-based check in the system. It can never be "overdue." It can never trigger a "due tomorrow" warning. It exists outside the accountability framework entirely. This check catches the tasks that would otherwise never be caught.
Check 6: No Time Estimate. Surfaces tasks without a time estimate. Without an estimate, a task can't be tracked against the client's purchased hours. The budget enforcement automation that blocks over-utilized tasks? It's blind to tasks without estimates. A developer could spend eight hours on an unestimated task for a client with two hours remaining, and the utilization system wouldn't catch it. This check closes that gap before it becomes a billing problem.
Every alert routes to the correct client channel automatically. All six checks use the client code to determine which Slack channel receives the alert. Violations are posted where the people responsible for that client are already working. No central dashboard to check, no morning ritual of clicking through views. The problems come to the team.
Before |
After |
|---|---|
| PMs manually check for overdue tasks across multiple clients | Overdue task alerts arrive in each client channel automatically |
| Tasks due tomorrow are discovered tomorrow when they're already late | 24-hour warning gives the team a full day to prepare or re-prioritize |
| Stale tasks sit in queues for weeks without anyone noticing | Any task untouched for 7+ days gets flagged with the date it was last updated |
| Unassigned tasks exist in limbo with no owner | No-assignee violations surface immediately so someone can claim or reassign them |
| Tasks without due dates are invisible to every deadline check | Missing due dates are called out as process violations that need correction |
| Tasks without time estimates silently break budget tracking | Missing estimates are flagged before they create billing blind spots |
| 48+ manual checks every morning (6 conditions × 8 clients) | Zero manual checks. Every violation arrives in Slack before the team opens their PM tool. |
The six checks form two distinct layers that serve different purposes.
The deadline layer (overdue, due tomorrow, decaying) answers the question: what needs my attention today? These are priority-shifting alerts. An overdue task might mean a client is waiting. A task due tomorrow might require rearranging someone's day. A decaying task might mean a commitment has been quietly dropped. These change what people do today.
The process layer (no assignee, no due date, no time estimate) answers the question: what's wrong with the data? These aren't urgent the way overdue tasks are. But they're corrosive. Every unassigned task is a gap in accountability. Every missing due date is a task that will never trigger a deadline warning. Every missing time estimate is a gap in budget visibility. These are the conditions that allow deadline violations to happen in the first place. Fix the process violations, and you get fewer deadline violations over time.
The data layer handles all the analytical logic. The definitions of "overdue," "decaying," and each process violation are all managed in pre-built filters that are easy to adjust. Changing the decay threshold from 7 days to 5 means updating a filter, not modifying the automation. Adding a new check (say, "tasks without a priority level") means creating a new view and adding one path.
The connection to budget enforcement is worth calling out explicitly. The budget enforcement automation monitors hour utilization and blocks tasks for over-budget clients. But that system depends on tasks having time estimates. Every task this audit flags as "No Time Estimate" is a task that's invisible to budget tracking. The daily audit catches the gap before it becomes a billing problem. These automations reinforce each other: the audit ensures data quality, and the enforcement automation uses that clean data to protect margins.
Now extend this across your client base. At 8 clients, that's 48 manual checks every morning. At 15 clients, it's 90. At 30, it's 180. At 50, it's 300 checks per day, every day, without fail. No human being can sustain that. But a production-grade automation can, every single morning, with perfect consistency. That's the difference between a team that catches problems reactively and one that starts every day knowing exactly where to focus.
Task hygiene is one of those problems that every agency knows about and nobody fully solves. Overdue tasks pile up. Fields go unfilled. Stale work sits in queues. And the PM who's supposed to catch all of it is also managing client expectations, attending meetings, reviewing deliverables, and putting out fires. Asking that same person to manually audit six conditions across every client every morning isn't realistic. It's aspirational. And aspirational processes fail under pressure.
This automation replaces morning discipline with morning data. Instead of trusting that every PM will remember to check every condition across every client every day, the system does the checking and delivers the results. The team opens Slack and sees exactly what's broken. No dashboards to review, no views to click through, no mental checklist of things to verify. And because it runs every day, nothing stays hidden for long. An unassigned task might exist for a day before it's flagged. A stale task might go one week without activity, but not two. The automation doesn't just catch problems. It compresses the window in which problems can grow. Automations that never forget, never get sick, never cut corners. The ops team that never takes a day off.