How to send Viewers email alerts on approved items
Hi, I use the OOB Workflow approval to approve items in a document library. Once the items are approved I want to send out an email alert to a group of people with "read" access. The problem is that the email alerts don't fire. I even changed the alerts to fire on "All Changes", but still nothing coming through. I assume this is because of the workflow approval and perhaps that the event doesn't fire when an item gets published after approval? But how can I get my readers to be notified of newly published (and approved) items? There must be a way of doing it?
August 19th, 2010 1:28am

Hi andreasbbbbb, Thanks to share your problem. Some point: 1. Could you check your outgoing email configuration in central admin? 2. Is your SP server configured with SMTP?? 3. Don't worry about the permission because it will automatically handle by site permission. Refer below links to configure Outgoing Email http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263462%28office.12%29.aspx http://blogs.officezealot.com/mauro/archive/2005/09/08/7939.aspx Please let me know if it worksCheers, Hemendra-MCTS "Yesterday is just a memory,Tomorrow we may never see"
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August 19th, 2010 9:21am

Hi Hemandra, Thanks for the feedback. The outgoing email and SMTP is all set up and working. All my SharePoint Alerts are running fine and sending emails. The one problem I have is with a document library that requires content approval before the items can be published. The alerts are not being sent when items are added (as the Viewers don't have permission to see documents in draft status). And I believe the alert is not triggered by the change of approval status. So right now I don't know how to notify users that have got read permissions of new items. Andreas.
August 19th, 2010 9:30am

this is by design. Either allow drafts to be visible to readers, approve elements, or elevate permissions for readers. You might refine the business need. If you want people to access / be notified of drafts in an approval workflow, by definition they are not readers but participants in the workflow :)Emmanuel ISSALY - Sharepoint MCTS, MCNEXT (FR).
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August 19th, 2010 11:55am

Try this. Please go to document library settings-> versioning settings, then select “Any user who can read items" for “who should see draft items in this document libraryCheers, Hemendra-MCTS "Yesterday is just a memory,Tomorrow we may never see"
August 19th, 2010 1:02pm

Hi guys, thanks for the responses. Maybe I wasn't quite clear in what I am trying to achieve. I don't really want alerts on drafts. I want alerts when an item has been approved with the OOB approval workflow. I cannot give readers the permission to view drafts in this scenario, as the whole idea is to only show them approved items. But there doesn't seem to be a way to set up the alerts so that they are triggered when an item has been approved. Andreas.
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August 25th, 2010 1:22am

Hi, I think you can use workflow to send email notifications handling approve action. The event fired by this action is itemupdated event but there are no any information in AfterProperties.ChangedProperties. I think you can add a flag field to mark if SharePoint has sent the emails for this item. (Note: do not handle the itemupdated event when the changed properties just contain this field.) Hope it is helpful! Seven
August 27th, 2010 9:55am

Hi Seven, sorry but can you explain to me how I would go about setting this up? Are you saying that I should use a workflow that is triggered when an item is changed? Can I check the "approved" status of the item and then manually send an email from within the workflow? The problem with sending the email via workflow is that I cannot send a Daily Summary. That's why I was looking at alerts, because I don't want my users to receive a notification with every single new item. Thanks for the info.
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August 30th, 2010 6:17am

Hi Seven, sorry but can you explain to me how I would go about setting this up? Are you saying that I should use a workflow that is triggered when an item is changed? Can I check the "approved" status of the item and then manually send an email from within the workflow? The problem with sending the email via workflow is that I cannot send a Daily Summary. That's why I was looking at alerts, because I don't want my users to receive a notification with every single new item. Thanks for the info. Yes, you can do this easily with a SharePoint Designer workflow. You set it to run on "edit" and put a conditional step at the beginning that checks to see if Approval Status is equal to 0#;Approved. You can't do a daily summary, though, because SPD workflows run per item, not for the whole list. To send a daily summary, you can create a new view that only includes items where the Approval Status is equal to Approved, then add an alert to for the Readers group that is bound to that view. Then, choose whether it's all changes to items in that view or only "new items" in that view...whatever you prefer. Of course, set the frequency to "daily summary." Did you ever try an alert? Oh, btw, I just re-read your initial post, and you said that alerts weren't going out when items are changed? There is nothing about the workflow or approval status that would stop the alerts from going out. If you had an alert set for EVERYONE (all readers) for EVERY change, then they would be getting flooded with alerts. If you really set it up this way and saw no alerts, then you have a problem in the farm. SharePoint Architect || Microsoft MVP || My Blog Planet Technologies || SharePoint Task Force
August 30th, 2010 8:59am

Hi All, Claytons last paragrah is correct.... "If you had an alert set for EVERYONE (all readers) for EVERY change, then they would be getting flooded with alerts. If you really set it up this way and saw no alerts, then you have a problem in the farm". -Ivan Ivan Sanders My LinkedIn Profile, My Blog, @iasanders.
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August 31st, 2010 12:56am

Yes, you can do this easily with a SharePoint Designer workflow. You set it to run on "edit" and put a conditional step at the beginning that checks to see if Approval Status is equal to 0#;Approved. You can't do a daily summary, though, because SPD workflows run per item, not for the whole list. Ok, I have set up a workflow that is hooked up to a document library. Items in that document library can only be published to a major version if they have been approved by the OOB approval workflow. I created a separate workflow to check if an item has been approved and to send an email. The workflow automatically starts whenever an item is changed. Condition: If Approval Status equals 0;#Approved Action: Email [myself] When I add a document to the library and modify the compulsory fields associated with it, the custom workflow gets executed, as expected. At this stage the Approval Status is not yet set to Approved, so of course nothing happens. Then the user decides to Publish a Major Version, which in turn executes the OOB approval workflow. The approver approves the document. The status changes to "Approved". However, the custom workflow does not get triggered by this. It seems approving the document does not get recognised as an "edit" event.
September 3rd, 2010 3:04am

Do you have content approval turned on, and do you have the OOTB Approval workflow set to update the Approval Status column (this is the last checkbox of the configuration page)?SharePoint Architect || Microsoft MVP || My Blog Planet Technologies || SharePoint Task Force
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September 3rd, 2010 5:11am

Yes. I see the approval status change to "Approved", but the workflow does not get executed. Only when I edit the properties of the document does the workflow execute.
September 3rd, 2010 6:55am

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