Considering Alerts as Basic Workflows

As discussed in Chapter 19, “Using Libraries and Lists in SharePoint 2010,” and specifically in the section titled “Reviewing the E-mail a Link and Alert Me Tools,” alerts are powerful and simple to use, and can be seen to provide a type of workflow functionality. Alerts are triggered by certain activities or changes, and they result in an email being sent immediately, or at a later time, to one or more end users. The end users can then take action based on the alert, as they see fit.

This is a form of workflow because an automated process is pushing information to end users via email, which is similar to one component of the workflows that will be discussed in this chapter, such as the Three-State workflow. Although alerts are limited in terms of configuration options, certain lists add customized alerts to the list of what’s available. For example, in an issues list, an alert option is added in the Send Alerts for these Changes section: Someone changes an item that appears in the following view. As shown in Figure 28.1, an alert in this type of list can be triggered by a change in a specific view. Because views are extremely customizable, and could, for example, just include items where the column values match certain criteria, this capability can be very powerful. For example, a view could be created in an issues list called My Active High Priority Issues that only displays items where the Assigned To value equals [Me], the Priority is set to (1) High, and where the Issue Status is set to Active. Then if any changes happen in this very specific view, the user will be notified.

Figure 28.1. Alert options in an issues list.