"Sending to SharePoint group" behavior

Is the "send to SharePoint groups" behavior such that it only adds users to the alert list that are in the SP group at creation time? That is, later changes to SharePoint groups (by adding or removing users) are not reflected in the list of alert recipients? This is the behavior I am observing... wanting to make sure it is the correct behavior of the product.

If this indeed the case, the power of using groups is severely limited here, since admins would have to modify, potentially, many alert lists if there are changes to the group membership . Again, if this is the case and there is some SP limitation that prevents a realtime update to the alert list from group modifications, it would be a great feature (albeit a workaround) to add a "group update" feature that would reflect the changes in a sharepoint group (or AD for that matter), into the alert list.

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2 Comments

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    Matthew McBride

    Using the "Add Alert to SharePoint Group" will send an alert notification to every member of the SharePoint group although looking on the Manage Users page it will only be assigned to the user who created the alert. I verified that adding users to the SharePoint group after creating the alert did indeed send the notification to the new members of the group.

    When creating an alert to be sent to a SharePoint group, the group name is added as a property to the alert and Alert Manager processes the members of the group when sending the notification - the alert is not added to each user account, only to the user who created the alert regardless if that user is a member of the group.

    If you are adding users to the group and they are not receiving alert notifications, check their profile in SharePoint and verify that the proper email address appears.

    David Fisher
    Software Engineer
    SharePoint Solutions
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    Matthew McBride

    Glad to hear that the intended behavior is the desired behavior, however I still had luck with new group members (even after verifying email addresses)... only original group members would get the alerts. Finally, in exasperation, I deleted the the group entirely, recreated it, added the original members, verified alerts, added the new members and voila the everyone got alerts. I'm glad to see it working the way I would expect... hoping that we don't see repeat bad behavior in other preexisting groups. Thanks.

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