How to use Stale & SLA
Time in status as numbers you can sum and chart, alerts when items go quiet, SLA targets per status with an escalation ladder, and a short list of what needs attention on each board. Set-up is one status column and a Save on each board.
Install
- Open Stale & SLA in the monday.com marketplace and click Install.
- If you are not an account admin, click Request to add instead. An account admin must install the app and connect it once.
Prerequisite: a board with a status column. A date or timeline column (for schedule slippage) and a people column (for escalations) are optional.
Before you start
Who can set it up: an account admin connects the app once and approves it on monday.com's consent page. Changing a board's settings stays admin-only.
What the app writes: only the numbers columns it creates on the boards you set up: Days in current status and Days since last activity, and, when you turn them on, Days slipped, Times rescheduled and one Total days in <status> column per tracked status. If a numbers column with exactly one of these titles already exists on the board, the app uses and overwrites that column instead of creating a new one. It does not modify any other column. It posts updates and sends notifications only for the escalations, digests and automations you set up.
Who sees the numbers: everyone who can see the board sees the numbers columns like any other column. Members can open the app's views on the boards they can see. Guests can open the board settings, the widget and the status timeline in read-only mode, only on the boards they were invited to. Viewers cannot open the app's views.
First use (3 steps)
- Add the board view. On the board, click + Add view → Apps → Stale & SLA settings. If the app is not connected yet, a welcome page opens first. An account admin clicks Get started, reads what the app does with the account's data, ticks I agree and clicks Connect, then approves the app on monday.com's consent page. The consent tab then closes by itself (if your browser keeps it open, it says you can close it) and the board view continues on its own.
- Choose the status column the timing should follow, decide whether time is counted in calendar days or in business hours (time zone, work days, hours, holidays), and click Save & run now. Days in current status and Days since last activity appear on every item, with the history read from the board's activity log.
- Optional: set an SLA target per status, tick the statuses that get a Total days column, choose a date column to track slippage, and set the stale threshold and escalation steps (who gets notified after how many days). Then build automations on the app's triggers from the board's Automate menu (see Automations below).
What the numbers mean
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Days in current status | Time since the item entered its current status. In business hours mode a value of 3 means three working days of the board's calendar. |
| Days since last activity | Time since the item last changed: a status change, a column edit or its creation, read from the board's activity log. The app's own column writes never count. Items with nothing in the last 120 days of the activity log are counted from their last known change (creation, last status change or last edit); the item view marks the value "at least". |
| Total days in <status> (optional) | For each status you tick under Statuses in the settings: the total time an item has spent in that status over every visit, in the board's clock. Sum it across a group to see where the time goes. |
| Days slipped (optional) | When you choose a date or timeline column to track: today's planned date compared with the first planned date the item ever had, read from the board's history. +5 means the item was pushed out five days (working days in business hours mode); a negative number means it was pulled in. |
| Times rescheduled (optional) | How many times the planned date was changed after it was first set. |
The app refreshes the numbers and checks its triggers and escalation steps at least once a day, and immediately when an admin clicks Save & run now.
What needs attention
Open What needs attention from the board header to see the board's stale, at-risk and overdue items with a one-paragraph summary. Each item shows its status, its days in that status and why it is listed, worst first. The list comes from the app's last run on the board.
Automations (workflow blocks)
Open the board's Automate menu, choose Create from scratch, click When this happens and search for a trigger, for example "no activity"; then pick one of monday.com's own actions, such as notify someone. Click every underlined word and fill it in: notify needs a message, and Create automation does nothing until it has one. monday.com's new automation builder does not yet list third-party actions or support templates, so the last column says what works today:
| Block | What it does | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| When an item has had no activity for N days trigger | No activity for N days (0.5 to 3650) in the statuses you chose. Fires once per quiet stretch and re-arms when someone touches the item. | From scratch, then notify someone. |
| When an item is at risk of missing its SLA trigger | 80% of the target for the item's status is used up. | From scratch, then notify someone. |
| When an item breaches its SLA trigger | The target for the item's status has passed. | From scratch, then notify someone. For steps to a people column, use the escalation ladder in the board's settings. |
| When an item's planned date slips N days or more trigger | The tracked date is N or more whole days later than the first planned date the item had. Fires once per item and first planned date; it fires again only if the date is pulled back under N days and later slips again. Needs a tracked date column in the board's settings. | From scratch, then notify someone. |
| When the weekly Stale & SLA digest is ready trigger | Once a week, on the weekday and hour chosen in the board's settings. | Not listed in monday.com's new automation builder yet. The digest itself reaches the admins who switch it on (below). |
| Escalate an item to a people column action | Shown in the builder as "Escalate to people column with message". Notifies everyone in the chosen people column of the item and posts an update on the item with the message (500 characters at most). | Not listed in monday.com's new automation builder yet. The escalation ladder in the board's settings does the same, step by step. |
| Get the stale, at-risk and overdue items on a board action | Shown in the builder as "Get up to 10 stale, at-risk and overdue items on this board". Read-only: returns 1 to 20 items from the app's last run and a one-paragraph summary. | Not listed in monday.com's new automation builder yet. |
The weekly digest
An account admin who wants the digest switches on Send it to me under Weekly digest, picks the weekday and hour and saves; each admin opts in for themselves (members and guests cannot). Every week you get one monday.com notification: a headline with the counts and the five most urgent items (SLA breached first, then at risk, stale, overdue and slipped). Preview this week's digest shows the full text, up to five items per section. Save & send it to me now sends a test copy to you only. The digest goes to each account admin who switches on Send it to me.
Reading the widget and the item view
The SLA & aging dashboard widget shows how many items are ok, at risk or breached, which items are the oldest, and, per status, how many open items are in it and their average days there so far. It also shows the board's cycle time: median, average and longest time from an item's creation to a finishing status such as Done, over the last 90 days, per group. With a date column tracked it adds a Schedule block: overdue items, items that slipped past their first planned date, items rescheduled twice or more, the average slip, how many finished items met their first date, and the worst offenders.
The Status timeline item view shows the same for one item, status by status, with its planned date, first planned date, slip and reschedule count.
Business hours
With business hours on, every number is in working days: an SLA of 2 days means two working days of the board's calendar (for example 9:00–17:00, Monday to Friday, minus the holidays you list). Account defaults for new boards live in the app's Settings tab (Installed apps → Stale & SLA → Settings).
Frequently asked
The numbers did not appear. Open the settings view and check the board is enabled and the status column is chosen; then click Save & run now. An admin has to have connected the app first.
An alert fired twice. It cannot fire twice for the same quiet stretch; a second alert means the item was active in between, or it moved to another status and went quiet again.
Can I use the numbers in formulas and charts? Yes. They are ordinary numbers columns: sum them, average them, chart them, filter on them.
Where is my data? On monday.com's own app hosting platform (monday code), in its EU region. The app stores your board settings, per-item timing summaries (including item names, group names and status labels) and the admin's access token (in monday code Secure Storage). When the app is uninstalled and monday.com confirms that the app has lost access to the account, the app deletes all of it. If monday.com cannot confirm this at the time, or the deletion does not finish, we complete the deletion by hand within 30 days of the uninstall.
Support
Email support@truecrane.com, in English. Every plan, including Free, gets the same support. A person replies within 2 business days, wherever you are; support days are Sunday to Thursday, Israel time. If the app stopped working, wrote wrong values or notified the wrong people, or you suspect a security or privacy problem, put URGENT in the subject.