Here's real-world application for the Alert Plus web part:
THE SPAMMINATOR
The base requirements were:
· Provide automated announcement mail that can be scheduled in advance for holidays, time sheets, and other admin type reminders.
· Control access to the general distribution lists so only a few persons can use them.
· Allow review of announcements before they are sent.
To meet these requirements, we followed these steps:
1) Created a Company Calendar list at the root portal site.
2) Granted write access to all the admins with “Require content approval” turned on.
3) Set an alert on the list for the site administrator so he or she can approve/reject new items.
4) Add a Notify On calculated column with this formula: “[Start Time] – 2”
5) Add a Send To column to receive the email address of the distribution list
6) Create a Send Today view with the filter “Notify On is equal to [Today]”
7) Configure the Alert Plus web part to watch the Send Today view to send the alert once at 7 AM.
8) Configure the company’s SPAM-blocking software to allow SharePoint’s send from address access to the company distribution lists.
Putting all the alerts at the root level portal allowed us to hook up a Mini-Calendar on the portal Home page to show holidays and other key events (not a requirement, but nice).
This system worked well until the SPAM-blocking rules were reset by a software update. It was easy enough to reset the rules, but the same problem recurred a couple times – which points up the problem with outside dependencies!
I give this use case an A++ just for including Trogdor clipart!
Nice work!
Mike Ferrara | President
Ferrara Data Consulting
