Introducing the New Alert Plus Azure Subscription Engine: Faster, More Reliable SharePoint Alerts
For the past year, we’ve been listening closely to customers as Microsoft retired SharePoint Alerts and organizations searched for a true enterprise replacement. While our original Azure backend has successfully powered thousands of alerts across customer environments, we knew we could make it even better.
Today we’re excited to introduce the Alert Plus Azure Subscription Edition, our next-generation alert processing engine designed around Microsoft Graph Change Notifications.
This is the biggest architectural enhancement we’ve made since launching Alert Plus for SharePoint Online.
Why We Built It
The original Alert Plus backend monitored SharePoint by periodically checking lists and libraries for changes.
This “polling” approach worked well and allowed us to restore functionality Microsoft removed from SharePoint Online. However, polling has natural limitations:
- Changes are detected on the next polling cycle rather than immediately.
- Larger environments require more processing as the number of monitored lists grows.
- Very active tenants can experience delays while the system checks thousands of lists.
The new Subscription Edition changes everything.
Instead of repeatedly asking SharePoint if something changed, Microsoft Graph now tells Alert Plus the instant a change occurs.
This event-driven architecture provides:
- Near real-time alert processing
- Lower Azure resource consumption
- Better scalability for enterprise deployments
- Improved reliability
- Elimination of timing gaps that can occur with polling architectures
Rather than scanning every configured list looking for updates, Alert Plus simply reacts whenever Microsoft Graph notifies it that something has changed.
It’s faster, cleaner, and far more efficient.
Built for Enterprise Scale
Many of our customers monitor hundreds—or even thousands—of SharePoint lists across Microsoft 365.
The Subscription Edition was specifically engineered to support these environments.
Instead of relying on a single Microsoft Graph application registration, Alert Plus can intelligently distribute work across multiple app registrations when needed. This helps avoid Microsoft’s Graph API throttling limits, ensuring alerts continue processing quickly even in very large tenants.
For smaller organizations, a single app registration is typically all that’s required. As your deployment grows, Alert Plus grows with it.
Understanding the Additional Microsoft Graph Permissions
One of the first questions customers ask is:
“Why does the new version require Sites.Manage.All?”
It’s a fair question.
The answer is actually quite simple.
Microsoft Graph requires this permission for any application that creates and maintains change notification subscriptions—the subscriptions that notify Alert Plus whenever a SharePoint list changes.
Without this permission, Microsoft simply doesn’t allow applications to register for real-time notifications.
Importantly, this permission does not grant users additional access to SharePoint content, nor does it change existing SharePoint permissions.
Alert Plus still respects your existing SharePoint security model. Users only receive alerts for content they already have permission to access.
The additional permission simply allows the Alert Plus service to create and renew the subscriptions that power real-time monitoring.
Security Remains a Top Priority
As with every Alert Plus release, security drove the architecture.
The Azure Subscription Edition:
- Uses Microsoft Graph Application Permissions with tenant administrator consent
- Authenticates using secure application credentials
- Stores credentials securely in Azure
- Reads only the items required to generate alerts
- Continues to honor SharePoint permissions when determining who receives notifications
Our goal is to deliver enterprise-class alerting while following Microsoft’s recommended architecture for event-driven applications.
Designed for the Future
The Subscription Edition is more than a performance enhancement.
It provides the foundation for future Alert Plus capabilities, including:
- Faster alert delivery
- Better scalability for large Microsoft 365 environments
- Reduced Azure resource requirements
- Improved monitoring and diagnostics
- Continued performance optimizations as Microsoft Graph evolves
This architecture positions Alert Plus to continue growing as the leading enterprise replacement for classic SharePoint Alerts.
Learn More
We’ve also published a detailed technical overview explaining exactly how the new subscription architecture works, why Microsoft Graph requires specific permissions, and how Alert Plus manages large-scale deployments.
Whether you’re an IT administrator, security reviewer, or Azure architect, the document walks through the complete processing flow, required Microsoft Graph permissions, subscription lifecycle management, and enterprise scaling strategy.
The Bottom Line
The Alert Plus Azure Subscription Edition represents a significant evolution in how SharePoint alerts are processed. By moving from polling to Microsoft Graph change notifications, we’ve built a faster, more scalable, and more efficient platform that is ready for organizations of every size.
It’s another important milestone in our mission to provide the most complete and reliable replacement for the SharePoint Alerts feature Microsoft retired—and we’re excited to continue building on this new foundation.