TL;DR: This single-trigger, multi-action Wrike AI agent automatically catches tasks that slip past their deadlines. The exact moment a task's finish date passes, it posts a short at-risk summary to your team's Slack channel and emails the assignee directly. It replaces manual deadline tracking, reduces status meeting surprises, and keeps your project delivery running smoothly.
Hello Community! 👋
Today, we’re sharing a guide to setting up the At-Risk Escalation Agent that automatically detects slipping work, posts a focused message to your project’s Slack channel, and emails the assignee with immediate next steps.
Below, you’ll find the complete configuration, prompts, setup instructions, and customization tips so you can plug this pattern directly into your project delivery and client services workflows ✔️
Agent Goal / Use Case
Every team that runs work to deadlines faces the same quiet problem: a task slips its finish date, nobody notices, and the consequences show up later as a delayed project or a surprised client.
Standard automations can fire when a date passes, but they send the same prewritten note to the same fixed list regardless of how serious the slip is or who needs to hear about it. An automation can notify; it cannot judge. It cannot read the task context, look at the team's specific situation, and choose the right wording for the moment.
The At-Risk Escalation Agent closes that gap by performing the following actions:
- Real-time detection: Scans active tasks and fires the instant a finish date passes.
- Contextual reading: Reviews the task title, description, assignee, recent comments, and custom fields.
- Multi-channel routing: Composes a tailored summary for your team's Slack channel and sends an email to the assignee simultaneously.
How It Works
This agent pattern uses a single date trigger to execute two distinct communication actions:
- The Trigger: A task crosses its finish date without being completed. The agent runs automatically via the "Date reaches" trigger, which is restricted to active tasks so completed or cancelled items are excluded.
- Context Gathering: The agent reads the task's title, description, assignee, due date, recent comments, and relevant custom fields.
- Action 1 (Post to Slack): The agent writes a short, 3 to 4 line at-risk message naming the task, owner, and context, then posts it to your connected Slack channel with a link back to the work item.
- Action 2 (Send Email): The agent writes a fuller version of the summary and emails the assignee via your connected Gmail or Outlook account, providing a clear next step.
- The agent log records the run, with the delivery status for both the Slack post and the email visible in one place.
Why this works: One date passing, two channels reached, zero manual follow-up. The team sees the high-level risk in Slack where they already work, and the owner gets an actionable item directly in their inbox.
Features Used
- Post to Slack notification action (NEW this month): The agent posts the at-risk message into the project's Slack channel without anyone needing to log into Wrike.
- Date-reaches trigger: This trigger runs the moment a date custom field, including the standard Finish date, crosses a threshold. It is restricted to active tasks by the trigger's own settings.
- Send email notification action: The agent emails the assignee directly via your connected Gmail or Outlook account.
- Reading task context including custom fields: The agent reads the task title, description, assignee, custom fields, and recent comments to compose the message.
Prerequisites
Before setting up the agent, ensure you have the following pieces in place:
Custom Fields on the Task:
You will want these custom fields available on the task, on its parent project, or on a place the agent can see:
- Assignee Email (Text): The assignee's email address, used as the recipient. If your account already exposes the assignee's email on their user record, you can let the agent read it from the user object.
- Project Owner Email (Text, optional): Used if you want to CC an internal escalation contact on the email.
A Slack Channel for the Project
- Connect your Slack workspace once at the account level, then choose a single destination channel during setup. Pick the channel where the project team already collaborates.
A Gmail or Outlook Account
- Ensure your work mailbox is connected in your agent settings so emails send from your address.
Agent Configuration
Trigger Settings
Setting | Value |
|---|
Type | Date reaches |
Field | Finish date |
Condition | Has passed |
The agent fires automatically the moment any task in its scope crosses its finish date without being marked complete. The trigger restricts itself to active tasks, so you do not need a separate filter for status.
General Instruction
Role
You are the At-Risk Escalation Agent for this project. When a task's finish date passes without the task being completed, you tell the right people in the right channels that the task has slipped, with enough context that they can act.
Decision logic
- Read the task: title, assignee, the relevant custom fields (Assignee Email, Project Owner Email if present), the most recent comments, and the original due date.
- Compose a short at-risk message for the team's Slack channel. The message should name the task, when it was due, who owns it, and one line of context drawn from the recent comments or the priority field if available.
- Compose a longer email to the assignee, naming the task, what slipped, and one concrete next step the assignee can take (e.g., "please update the status and propose a new finish date in the comments by end of day").
Tone
- Direct and matter-of-fact. Not alarmist, not apologetic.
- One mention of the assignee by first name in the email opening.
Output
- Two messages, each composed for its own channel. The Slack message stays short (3-4 lines max). The email is fuller (a short paragraph plus a bullet of the suggested next step).
Action Configurations
Action 1: Post to Slack
Setting | Value |
|---|
Type | Post a Slack notification |
Slack Workspace | (the workspace you authenticated at account level) |
Slack Channel | (Your project team channel, e.g., #project-acme-launch) |
Scope | The work item where the trigger happened |
Per-Action Instruction:
Post a short at-risk message into the project's Slack channel.
Format the message as:
⚠️ At-risk: <task title>
Owner: <assignee first name>
Was due: <original finish date>
Context: <one line drawn from recent comments or, if no comments,the priority/risk fields if present>
<link back to the work item>
Keep it under 4 lines including the link.
Action 2: Send Email
Setting | Value |
|---|
Type | Send email notification |
From | (Your connected Gmail or Outlook account) |
Scope | The work item where the trigger happened |
Per-Action Instruction:
Send an email to the assignee. Extract the address from the Assignee Email custom field on the task. If the Project Owner Email custom field has a value, CC it.
Subject: At-risk: <task title>
Body (one short paragraph + one suggested next step):
Hi <assignee first name>,
<one to three sentences naming the task, when it was due, what the agent has learned from the recent comments about why it slipped if anything>.
A suggested next step:
- <one concrete action with a soft deadline, e.g., "please post a new proposed finish date in the comments by end of day Friday so the project plan can be updated">
Thanks for taking a look,
<project name> — automated by Wrike
Step-by-Step Setup
Step 1: Prepare the Fields and Channels
- Set up your Assignee Email custom text field if required.
- Ensure your core team Slack channel is ready and active.
- Authenticate your Slack workspace and your email client (Gmail or Outlook) in your Wrike account settings.
Step 2: Deploy the Agent
- Go to Space Settings → AI Agents and click + Custom AI agent.
- Name the agent At-Risk Escalation Agent and set the scope to Any subitem of the item where the agent was added.
- Set the trigger to Date reaches → Finish date → Has passed.
- Paste the General Instructions Prompt into the main prompt window.
Step 3: Configure the Actions
- Click Add Action and select Send Slack notification. Choose your target channel and paste the Action 1 instruction block.
- Click Add Action again and select Send Email. Configure your sender options and paste the Action 2 instruction block.
- Test your prompt configurations inside the Playground environment using a test task.
- Appoint the completed agent to your target folder or project space.
Step 4: Verify the Setup
- Create a test task in your appointed folder and fill out the Assignee Email field.
- Ensure the task is active and manually set its finish date to a time that has passed.
- Verify the agent triggers immediately, sending a clean, 4 line summary to your Slack channel and a structured email to the assigned inbox.
Customization Examples
- Project Owner CC on Slack: If your project owner does not always read the team channel, add a second action that emails them when the priority field is "High" or "Critical." This gives you two actions and two recipients from a single trigger.
- Different Slack channels by region or client tier: If your business runs by region or client tier, set up multiple instances of this agent (one per channel), with each instance scoped to a subset of work using the new custom field filters. The agent then routes Critical EMEA tasks to one channel and Critical AMER tasks to another.
- Add a soft warning version that runs three days before the finish date: Once the additional date conditions trigger on feature ships next month, you can configure a sister agent that posts a soft warning a few days before the deadline. This gives the team time to act before the slip becomes an incident.
Expected Results
- Immediate Impact: Deadline overruns are caught instantly, eliminating the multi-day gaps where slipped tasks go unnoticed.
- Team Benefits: Assignees receive direct, non-alarmist emails outlining exactly how to remediate the timeline, keeping communication clean and constructive.
- Organizational Benefits: Client-facing project timelines stay protected, team accountability increases, and risk metrics become highly transparent across your target channels.
Caveats
- The Slack post action commits to one channel per action: If you need messages in multiple channels, set up one action per channel. The agent will not choose between channels at the moment.
- Email send requires a connected Gmail or Outlook account: The email comes from your mailbox instead of a generic Wrike sender, allowing the assignee to reply to a real human address if they need to.
- The Slack notification does not support threading or @-mentions yet : These features are on our roadmap. For now, the agent posts as a top-level message and includes assignee identification in the body text instead of a Slack @-mention .
- The trigger uses the standard Finish date field: If your team uses a different date custom field as its working deadline, point the trigger at that specific field instead.
Questions or Feedback?
If you want help adapting this agent to your team's workflow with different fields, different channels, or different escalation logic, reach out in the community comments or contact your Customer Success Manager.
