SharePoint Alerts not Working for Group Recipients
After upgrading from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010, we had an issue with alerts not working for some group recipients. Individual alerts worked, and some group recipients received alerts as expected.
Troubleshooting Steps
* Checked that other alerts were working normally. (If not, check the timer service)
* Verified that the group was an AD security group (not a distribution list), and that the AD group was email-enabled.
* Checked that the group had been explicitly added to a SharePoint group (such as the default Viewers group) with at least read permission to the site and to the list on which the alert was created.
* Verified that the SharePoint group’s membership was set to “Visible to everyone.” (People and Groups>SharePointGroupInQuestion > Settings>Group Settings)
* Manually triggered a full synchronization of the User Profile Service with synchronizations settings of “Both People and Groups”). Caution: this can be time consuming and may affect performance in large environments. Do this outside production hours if possible.
Resolution
When none of these efforts resolved the issue, the following forum held a suggestion from Xing-Bing Yu to change a Mail Flow Setting for the group on the Exchange server:
1. Go to Exchange Management Console -> Recipient Configuration -> Distribution group.
2. Right-click on the problem group and choose properties.
3. On the Mail Flow Settings tab, double click on Message Delivery Restrictions.
4. Uncheck the check box “Require that all senders are authenticated”.
After the Exchange 2007 setting was changed, the alerts emailed as expected to all recipients.
When selected, this setting restricts the ability to send a message addressed to the security group to those persons in the Global Address List. SharePoint’s SMTP address was seen as foreign, so any messages with a sending address from SharePoint were not relayed from Exchange.
March 22nd, 2011 at 7:46 pm
Joy,
When you upgraded did you happen to detail this anywhere? I’m looking for a logical path, with some basic examples. Or did you follow something online that I can reference? I’m not really in mind for all the tools there are around (We may use one, but they don’t really paint the picture I’m looking for)
Thanks..
April 14th, 2011 at 1:21 pm
Sounds like another blog post in the making.
August 2nd, 2011 at 3:39 pm
David, TechNet has a much improved site for planning and getting an overview of the possible scenarios for upgrade. They’ve pulled together a lot of resources in one spot. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee517214
I also have a slide deck on the upgrade available at http://sites.gitca.org/okcsug/Presentation%20Slides/Forms/AllItems.aspx which talks about prepping for the upgrade from both a technical and business perspective. That deck includes a “dirty little secrets” list of things that we saw cause problems. You can use that list to create your own list of things that need to be tested before you commit to the switch.
August 2nd, 2011 at 1:18 pm
Hello Joy
Big thanks for your explanation. It really helps me to assign alert to AD security group.
But, for exaple, i want to delete assigned alert to the group. How it can be done. Now I can not see assigned alert to the group in “Manage My Alerts” inset.
August 2nd, 2011 at 2:52 pm
Joy
Sorry to trouble you. I found solution for my question.
There is possibility to manage all alerts in Site Administration\User ALerts page
August 2nd, 2011 at 3:31 pm
Oh good Igor, you found that a site administrator can see and edit all the alerts from Site Actions>Site Settings>User Alerts (Under Site Administration). The tricky part is that if you sign up a group for an alert, you can only edit or delete the alert for the whole group. The individuals in that group can sign up for additional alerts, but they cannot unsubscribe a single person from an alert set for a group. As long as they are a member of the group, they’ll receive the alerts for which their group is subscribed. That’s the downside of using groups: the individuals don’t have the ability to opt out. Glad you got it figured out.
August 3rd, 2011 at 7:05 am
Joy, you absolutly right. This idea came to me today morning. In any case, we have possibilty to use AD groups for alerting, but we should realize it with limitation and only after in-depth analysis of our projects.
One of solutions to unsubscribe from alert is to remove person from the group, but in this case we need to involve administrative resources of domain and exactly we may catch here some others reefs.
September 19th, 2011 at 6:37 am
Alert on one announcemnet list is working for group, but alert on another list not working on same group. Users can only getting initial confirmation emails but no alert emails on event viewer having this error.
Event Id 6772 There was an internal error invoking the timer job ‘{EB704AB9-FD68-4BCE-9CB5-2A5124CD3B36}’ for service ‘{9FD49A8A-04F3-4DAA-94D4-D5D996A5BD79}’.
October 19th, 2011 at 12:27 pm
Joy, is it posible to send alerts to users members of AD security groups without an Exchange Server?
We don´t use Exchange in my company but we use an imap Linux mail server.
I have configure at any AD_user his email adress in the email adress field at the properties of the user.
This works fine when i suscribe an individual user to an alert, but when i tried to subscribe an AD_security group (example:AD_GROUP) the Sharepoint said that the following users do not have email addresses specified:
Dominio\AD_GROUP
I wish use groups insted of add users individualy.
Thanks a lot
October 19th, 2011 at 12:55 pm
Francisco, I have not used a Linux mail server but have heard that it works. Perhaps the error message you are getting is that the group is not an email enabled group [it does not have a group@dominio.net email address associated with it]. Since I don’t have experience with this configuration, if you still have problems I’d suggest you ask this question in a forum: http://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/
October 19th, 2011 at 1:24 pm
Thank for your soon answer.
I apoligize for my bad english.
I have been reading that makes a group “email capable” always involves an Exchange Server feature at the group properties.That features does not appears in my AD_GROUP properties because we dont use Exchange Server so the only thing i could do was configure an mailaddress@dominio.net to the group.
After doing that,I still receive the message: “the following users do not have email addresses specified:
Dominio\AD_GROUP”.
I will use the forum taht you recomend me.
Thanks