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About this lesson

Set up notifications on a list or library to receive an email or text alert when something changes. 

Quick reference

SharePoint Notifications

It's very important that we make content accessible and stay on top of any changes in SharePoint by setting up notifications. For example, we might want to receive an email notification when someone uploads a new document to the document library or changes information in a list. 

When to use

Setup notifications on files, folders, libraries, and lists when we need to stay on top of any changes happening on the team site. 

Instructions

Setting up Notifications (Alert Me)

In this example, we are going to set up an alert so that we are notified when anything changes in the Training Contacts list. 

  • Go to the Training Contacts list.
  • From the horizontal menu, click the three dots and click Alert Me. 
  • Title: Enter a title for the Alert. This will be included in the title of the email or text notification. 
  • Who to send the alerts to: Type in the name or names of who is to receive the alerts. 
  • Delivery Method: How do we want to be alerted: email or text? Check the email address is correct. 
  • Change Type: What type of change do we want to be alerted to. 
  • Send Alerts for these changes: We can filter based on specific criteria.  
  • When to send alerts: Specify when to send alerts: immediately, Daily or Weekly. Choosing daily or weekly sends a summary report of all changes for the day or week. 
  • Click OK. 

Test it out!

Once we have set up our notifications, it's time to test that they are working. 

  • Click on one of the contacts in the Training Contacts list.
  • Change the business phone number. 
  • Click Save. 
  • Open Outlook and check you have received an email notification. 

Setting Up Alerts in the Classic Experience

If we are using the classic experience, we set up alerts in a slightly different way. In this example, we are going to set up alerts on the Event Calendar. 

  • Click on the Event Calendar. 
  • Click the Calendar ribbon. 
  • Click the Alert Me button. 
  • Define the criteria and click OK. 

Hints & tips

  • Notifications can be set up on libraries, lists, or individual files. 
  • If we have many site members, it's more efficient to send a daily or weekly summary report of changes. 
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  • 00:04 It's really important when using SharePoint to make your content more
  • 00:07 accessible.
  • 00:09 And one way to do that is to set up email notifications so
  • 00:12 you can keep on top of any changes.
  • 00:15 For example, if somebody adds a new document to a certain document library, or
  • 00:19 maybe if a new item is added to the calendar,
  • 00:22 you can set up your SharePoint so that you receive an email notification to let you
  • 00:27 know that those changes have been made.
  • 00:30 So what we're going to do in this lesson is we're going to go into one of
  • 00:33 our lists.
  • 00:34 And I'm going to show you how you can set up notifications on that list so
  • 00:38 that if any changes are made, you're notified.
  • 00:41 So for this, I'm going to use, let's use this one here, the Training Contacts list.
  • 00:46 And it's worth noting that you can set up notifications on just specific items or
  • 00:52 a list as a whole.
  • 00:53 And we're going to set up our notifications on the entire list.
  • 00:57 So for this, I am in a list that uses the modern experience.
  • 01:02 So we'll find this option underneath the three dots in the horizontal menu bar.
  • 01:07 And the option that we're looking for here is Alert Me.
  • 01:11 So this will open up a window where you can then define your alert settings.
  • 01:16 So right at the top, you can see the Alert Title.
  • 01:19 So it says enter the title for this alert.
  • 01:22 This is included in the subject of the notification for this alert.
  • 01:26 So I could leave this as Training Contacts or
  • 01:28 I could change this to something a bit more meaningful if I wanted to.
  • 01:31 So maybe I want to add the word alert at the start here, something like that.
  • 01:36 Now, I'm going to leave that up to you to determine.
  • 01:37 I'm just going to leave mine as Training Contacts.
  • 01:41 I can then specify who to send the alerts to.
  • 01:44 So you might want to send them to yourself or
  • 01:46 you might want to redirect them to other people.
  • 01:49 Or maybe you want to have multiple people receiving the alerts.
  • 01:53 Now once again, I am just one person working away here, so
  • 01:57 I'm just going to leave that as myself.
  • 01:59 I can then choose the delivery methods.
  • 02:01 So how do I want to be alerted of the change?
  • 02:05 And I have a couple of choices in here.
  • 02:07 I could choose to receive an email, or if I want to, I can receive a text message.
  • 02:12 Now I'm going to keep mine on email and I can see my email sitting just there, so
  • 02:15 I just want to confirm that that is correct.
  • 02:18 I can then specify the change type.
  • 02:22 So what kind of change do I want to be alerted to?
  • 02:25 Now the default here is all changes.
  • 02:28 So when anything changes in this particular list,
  • 02:32 I'm going to receive an email notification.
  • 02:35 Now you might find that that is a bit of overkill,
  • 02:38 particularly if this is a very active list and
  • 02:41 maybe you have lots of people accessing all the time and making changes.
  • 02:46 You might not want to be alerted to absolutely everything that's going on in
  • 02:49 this list.
  • 02:50 Otherwise your email could end up very, very clogged up.
  • 02:54 So I do have some other options in here.
  • 02:57 I could choose to be alerted only when new items are added to this list.
  • 03:02 So if somebody adds another contact, I'll receive an alert.
  • 03:05 I could choose to be notified if any of the existing list items are modified.
  • 03:10 So if maybe somebody changes the office that they're located in or
  • 03:14 their phone number, I'll receive a notification.
  • 03:18 Or I could say I only want to be notified if contacts have been deleted from
  • 03:22 this list.
  • 03:24 Now I'm going to leave mine on all changes.
  • 03:26 The next section is send alerts for these changes.
  • 03:30 And if we read the piece of text just underneath,
  • 03:33 it says specify whether to filter alerts based on specific criteria.
  • 03:37 You may also restrict your alerts to only include
  • 03:40 items that show in a particular view.
  • 03:42 So I have a few different options here.
  • 03:48 I can receive an alert when somebody else changes a contact in this list.
  • 03:53 Or if somebody else changes a contact that's been created by me.
  • 03:58 I can also choose to receive alerts if somebody else changes a contact that was
  • 04:02 last modified by me.
  • 04:04 And I can get quite specific with this last option.
  • 04:08 I can choose to receive alerts when someone changes an item that appears in
  • 04:12 the following view.
  • 04:13 And you can see here it's showing Freeman Contacts which is one of the views that I
  • 04:18 created.
  • 04:19 Now for this, I'm going to say when anything changes.
  • 04:22 And the final option I have is when to send alerts.
  • 04:25 So do I want to receive them immediately, so as soon as the change is made?
  • 04:30 Do I want to receive a daily summary or a weekly summary?
  • 04:34 Now I would say again, if this is a very active list and
  • 04:37 you have lots of members of your team who are constantly making changes,
  • 04:41 instead of receiving alerts as soon as they happen,
  • 04:44 which might get a little bit annoying if there's lots of them.
  • 04:48 You might choose to wrap it all up in maybe a daily summary report or
  • 04:51 a weekly summary report, which is just going to show you all of the changes
  • 04:55 made throughout the day or throughout the week.
  • 04:59 And if I was to select, say daily summary,
  • 05:01 I can then choose an exact time that I want to receive that report.
  • 05:05 So it might be that I decide that I want to go through my daily summary report
  • 05:10 at maybe 5PM each evening just before I leave the office.
  • 05:15 Now for this example, I'm going to say, send notifications immediately.
  • 05:19 So now that I've defined all of my alert settings, I can click on OK.
  • 05:23 And what I'm going to do is I'm going to test this by making a change to one of
  • 05:27 these contacts.
  • 05:29 So I'm going to go into this first one, just here.
  • 05:33 I'm going to edit the fields and I'm going to change the business phone number.
  • 05:38 So let's just change that to something else.
  • 05:43 And let's click Save at the bottom.
  • 05:46 So effectively what I've done here is I've made an change to an existing record.
  • 05:51 So now if I open up Outlook, I should find that I've received an email notification.
  • 05:57 I can see that yes I have, and it's telling me what that change has been.
  • 06:01 And you can see here if you look at the information where we have business phone
  • 06:05 number, it's crossed out the old one, inputted the new one,
  • 06:08 and it says edited next to it.
  • 06:09 So I can immediately tell what's been changed on that specific record.
  • 06:13 So that is how you set up alerts on lists.
  • 06:17 Now just before we finish this lesson, I just want to show you where you
  • 06:20 go if you're on a page where you're using the classic experience.
  • 06:24 So let's jump into our event calendar.
  • 06:27 If I wanted to set up alerts on this calendar,
  • 06:30 so maybe be alerted when a new item is added or maybe when something is deleted.
  • 06:35 I don't have my menu running across the top because this is the classic
  • 06:39 experience.
  • 06:40 But I do have my ribbons at the top.
  • 06:43 So if I click the Calendar tab, you'll see in the share and
  • 06:46 track group in the middle, we have that same option, alert me.
  • 06:50 And I can say set alert on this list.
  • 06:53 And I can then go through and specify the parameters for this alert.

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