Forum Discussion
SharePoint Online Alerts
I'm a site admin for a SharePoint Online site and wondering if there is a way to disable the list alerts? So, in this particular List, I'm considering to add more metadata, but many users have alerts set on it and I'd not like it to shoot an email to everyone, when I add more columns.
After looking at online resources, I understood that a site collection admin could change the alert settings to manage the changes, but I'm wondering if there is a workaround like how about if I change the List Permission settings to View only for the time I make these changes? Would users still receive the alerts? I would appreciate your response. Thanks.
10 Replies
As I recall, the only way is to use the option from Site settings > User alerts. Unfortunately you will have to manually select every user and delete the alert. After you finish with adding the fields they will have to recreate their alert.
Are you simply adding fields, or are you adding fields and updating the values of these new fields?
If you're just adding a field, I'm not so sure that'll trigger alerts. Alerts are triggered by actions done against items; if an item is added, if an item is deleted, if an item is modified, etc. Adding a field shouldn't constitute a modification to an item, so if that's true, alerts shouldn't be triggered.
If you are populating those fields, then yes, you're going to trigger any alerts on these items. I don't think you're going to find a way around that, and I'll be disappointed in Microsoft if you do--the whole point of an alert is to let someone know what happens to items, and if alerts could be dodged, that'd be a serious blow to the transparency of SharePoint because it's taking away a user's right to know what happened to information they might care about (regardless of how innocent the changes might be, like yours is). Alerts shouldn't care what rights users have as long as they can access the list, so I'm not sure changing the permissions of your users is going to affect anything. In my opinion, your best option might be to let your users know they might get a spike in alerts. Hopefully most of them asked for summary alerts instead of individual ones.
Thanks, Matt for your reply. I appreciate it.
Yes, I will be populating those columns and in that case alerts will be triggered. I understand the purpose of Alerts and importance of it's transparency, but it would have been great if they had an option to temporarily disable the alerts, especially when maintenance and tasks like this are critical for list optimization. Probably, you're right and I need to send a notification email to all the users before making any those changes. In that case , would User Alerts option under Site Content is the only way to verify who all have alerts setup on that list? The reason why I 'm verifying is because I know a user whom I don't see in the User Alerts list is receiving the alerts. Not sure , how? Please let me know if you know of any ways to confirm who all are receiving the alerts from the list? Thanks again
Site Settings -> User Alerts is the only way I know of within the O365 interface to check for alerts, though I have heard Powershell can be used to discover that as well (not sure if Powershell would find your mystery user, though).
If you're not sure the User Alerts information is going to show you everyone with an alert, you could just email blast everyone with read rights or higher in this list and tell them you're adding some fields. I usually don't like emailing more people than I need to (and I'm over-engineering at this point, and maybe your audience is too big for this to be feasible), but that would ensure everyone that sees this list knows there's some changes to your data architecture, which is something.
