Share via

Configure alert settings for a Web application (SharePoint Foundation 2010)

  • Article

 

Applies to: SharePoint Foundation 2010

To help users keep track of changes that are made to a Web site, Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 includes the alerts feature, which is an e-mail notification service. Users can configure which alerts they want to receive or send to communicate and track changes to items on a Web site.

Users can create alerts on the following items in a site:

  • Lists

    Users are notified of changes to the list, such as when an item is added, deleted, or changed in a list.

  • List items

    Users are notified of changes to a particular item in a list.

  • Document libraries

    Users are notified of changes to the document library, such as when a document is added, deleted, or changed in a document library or when Web discussions are added, changed, deleted, closed, or started for a document.

  • Documents

    Users are notified of changes in a particular document such as when a document is changed, added, deleted, or closed.

Note

Users must have at least View Items permissions to use alerts. For more information about how to assign user permissions to a Web application, see Plan site permissions (SharePoint Foundation 2010).

You can use Central Administration or Windows PowerShell 2.0 cmdlets to configure alerts. You can turn on or turn off alerts, and you can specify how many alerts users can create.

Before alerts can work for any Web site, outgoing e-mail must be enabled for the server. For more information about how to use alerts and administrative messages and set up outgoing e-mail, see Configure outgoing e-mail (SharePoint Foundation 2010).

Note

Some deployments have a resource forest in which users are in a different domain from SharePoint Foundation 2010. If the resource forest trusts the user domain but the user domain does not trust the resource forest, users will receive intermittent alerts. To resolve this issue, implement one of the following solutions: 

  • Retain the one-way trust, and use universal security groups in the user domain to grant permission to SharePoint resources. For more information, see Create a New Group (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkID=235815).

  • Create a two-way, forest trust for the resource domain and the user domain, and then use local security groups in the resource domain to grant permission to SharePoint resources. For more information, see Create a Two-Way, Forest Trust for Both Sides of the Trust (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkID=261337) and Create a New Group (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkID=235815).

For more information, see "Scenarios with Alerts and more than one Active Directory Forest when using NTLM for a WebApp" entry in the Microsoft Office and related blog (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=264920).

In this article:

  • To configure alert settings for a Web application by using Central Administration

  • To configure alert settings for a Web application by using Windows PowerShell

To configure alert settings for a Web application by using Central Administration

  1. Verify that the user account that is performing this task is a member of the Farm Administrators SharePoint group.

  2. On the SharePoint Central Administration Web site, click Application Management.

  3. On the Application Management page, click Manage Web Applications.

  4. Click the Web application for which you want to configure alerts. The ribbon becomes active.

  5. On the ribbon, click the General Settings drop-down menu, and then click General Settings.

  6. On the Web Application General Settings page, in the Alerts section, configure the following settings:

    • Specify whether alerts are On or Off. By default, alerts are On.

    • Specify the Maximum number of alerts that a user can create in a SharePoint Web site. This value can be any integer from 1 through 2,000,000,000, or you can specify that the number of alerts is unlimited. The default value is 500 alerts.

  7. After you have finished configuring alerts, click OK.

To configure alert settings for a Web application by using Windows PowerShell

  1. Verify that you meet the following minimum requirements: See Add-SPShellAdmin.

  2. On the Start menu, click All Programs.

  3. Click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products.

  4. Click SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.

  5. To configure alerts by using Windows PowerShell 2.0, you must first retrieve the SPWebApplication object for the Web application by using the Get-SPWebApplication cmdlet together with the URL of the Web application. You must then set the appropriate alert properties for the object, and save the changes by using the Update() method of the SPWebApplication object. The following code sample performs each of these steps.

    At the Windows PowerShell command prompt, type the following commands:

    $webappurl="<http://ServerName:WebApplicationName>"
$webapp=Get-SPWebApplication $webappurl 
# to query the settings you can use the following properties
# Gets a value that specifies whether alerts are allowed in the Web application.
$webapp.AlertsEnabled

# Gets a value specifying whether there is a limit to the number of 
# lists, document libraries, documents and list items for which a user can create alerts.
$webapp.AlertsLimited

# Gets the maximum number of lists, document libraries, documents and list items 
# for which a single user can create alerts in a SharePoint web site.
$webapp.AlertsMaximum


# Sets a value that specifies whether alerts are allowed in the Web application.
# to enable alerts in this Web application 
$webapp.AlertsEnabled = $true
$webapp.Update()

# to disable alerts in this Web application 
$webapp.AlertsEnabled = $false
$webapp.Update()



# Sets a value specifying whether there is a limit to the number of 
# lists, document libraries, documents and list items for which a user can create alerts.
# to enable limited number of alerts and use of AlertsMaximum setting 
$webapp.AlertsLimited = $true
$webapp.Update()

# to enable unlimited number of alerts
$webapp.AlertsLimited = $false
$webapp.Update()

# Sets the maximum number of lists, document libraries, documents and list items 
# for which a single user can create alerts in a SharePoint web site.
$webapp.AlertsMaximum=<MaxAlertsNumber>
$webapp.Update()

    Where:

    • <http://ServerName:WebApplicationName> is the URL of the Web application.

    • <MaxAlertsNumber> is the maximum number of alerts that a single user can create.

For more information, see Get-SPWebApplication.