Question

I created a list and setup alerts that send to several individuals when a new item is added to the list. However, I have one additional requirement to have an alert email sent to a Public Folder in Exchange.

The folder is setup with an email address, [e-mail], but when I try to add that address into the “Send Alerts To” field (when creating a new alert), SharePoint returns an error: “No Exact match was found.”

I thought about setting up the alert in a custom workflow through SharePoint designer, but is there a way to easily reuse the existing Alert Email as a template for the body of the custom alert?

Any other ideas or pointers would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

You can’t send an alert to a regular email address (or mailbox) because it isn’t associated with a user/group. If it isn’t associated with a user/group then it can’t have permissions to any list or list items in SharePoint. Finally, if it doesn’t have permissions then it can’t receive an alert (or that would be a pretty big security hole).

Probably the easiest method is what you mention: using a custom SharePoint designer workflow. It isn’t going to be 100% the same but you can just copy the HTML from a previous alert and then try to fill in the data as much as you can in the workflow. (see here for an article describing almost exactly what you want).