If I were to sum up Alert Plus with one word, it would be ExtremelyFlexibleWorkOfSharePointArt… OK, OK I cheated and made up my own word, but it really is an Extremely Flexible Work of SharePoint Art.  Alert Plus is one of our oldest products (it turns five years old in November), and yet it is STILL one of our bestsellers! And just when you thought there was no possible way to make Alert Plus even better… guess what?

Bamboo Solutions has released a new Minor release of Alert Plus! So what could we possibly pack into an already jam-packed product that provides:

• Centralized Alerts Management – Manage all Bamboo Alert Plus alerts in a single Web Part.
• Comprehensive Set of Triggers – Trigger alerts when item exist, are created, modified, deleted, or when a column changes.
• Limit Alterable Items with Filters – Filter the items to alert based on an existing List View or set of conditions.
• Multiple Routing Methods – Send notification to distribution lists, including to those not members of SharePoint sites.
• Customizable Rich Text E-mails – Include Columns From the Alert Item
• Display Both Past & New Column Values – Provide Professional Appearance With Embedded Images
• Keep Inboxes Clutter Free – Merge multiple notifications into a single summary alert.

Best part of all: No Developer Coding Required! Build effective alerts through a user-friendly interface within SharePoint.

So what did we do for the newest release of Alert Plus?

• Alert Job Security Improvements: In past versions of Alert Plus, Web Part access was controlled a selection of groups in the Web Part Tool Pane.  We now utilize SharePoint Security out-of-the-box.  This means the SharePoint Site Administrator can now manage who can access the configuration of Alert Jobs (even down to the individual Alert Jobs) managing the users’ access to the Alert Plus Configuration List.  If your company has configured particular Alert Jobs that you do not want to be modified, simply remove permissions for those individual Alert Jobs in the list to “lock” them from access except for a certain set of users.
• Admin tab Integrated into Event tab:  The options Follow-up Wait Days and Custom Schedule have now been integrated into the Event tab for smoother configuration, allowing us to remove the Admin tab completely from the Web Part.  When users select An Item Exists for “What triggers an alert?” the Follow-up Wait Days field will appear below the drop down menu.  To reduce the number of alerts received for the same item when the alert job runs, use the Follow-up Wait Days setting available for the An item exists trigger to define a number of days to wait before alerting on the same item again. Set Follow-up Wait Days to 0 (zero) to continue sending alerts every time the alert job runs.
  
  For Custom Schedule, users can now select Custom Schedule in the drop down menu “When should alerts be sent?”  Now with Custom Schedule, users can further select the type of Custom Schedule. Below is a table of options available
  

  Custom Schedule Setting	Alert Processing Schedule Options
  Minutes	Specify a frequency from 1-59 minutes
  Hourly	Specify the time of the hour to send alerts
  Daily	Specify the hour and minutes to send alerts each day
  Weekly	Specify the days of the week and the hour and minutes of the day to send alerts

• Relative URL Support: Now users can define the source location of the SharePoint List or Bamboo List Rollup using Relative URLs.  This is a huge feature for integrators who want to use Alert Plus in their SharePoint solutions that use Site Templates/Site Definitions or companies with multiple AAMs to the same Web Application content.
• Selection of Multiple SharePoint Groups in Recipients tab: In the Recipients tab, when the user selects Send to members of a SharePoint Site or Cross-Site Group, they can now select more than one SharePoint Group to receive alerts (originally, users could only select one).
• Mail Format tab has a couple of updates as well:
  • Ability to select priority of email alert notifications (High, Normal, Low).
  • And for those companies who only support plain text emails, you now have the ability to define if the emails are sent in plain text.

Bamboo engineers have also introduced a number of improvements to the back-end architecture for further reliability.

Interested in giving Alert Plus a try?  Did you know that ALL of Bamboo products come with a fully-functional 30-day trial?  Yup that’s right, and here’s how you can get that trial. Simply open the product page, click the  button, and follow the provided Checkout steps to download the server-side installation package.