SharePoint Alerts retiring in 2026: Make way for SharePoint Rules

SharePoint Alerts is a native tool that helps keep track of your SharePoint Online and SharePoint Server activities. However, as of July 2025, the ability to create SharePoint Alerts is blocked for new tenants and will be deprecated by July 2026.

Why would Microsoft deprecate SharePoint Alerts? What can you do to ensure you still get SharePoint notifications even after the deprecation? Read this blog to find out.

What are SharePoint Alerts?

The Alerts feature in SharePoint Online and SharePoint Server helps users stay informed of changes to content in their sites like lists, libraries, folders, files, or specific items. This automated notification system tracks and sends SharePoint email notifications or SMS messages whenever a change is detected.

Why is SharePoint Alerts being deprecated?

SharePoint Alerts is being deprecated from the Microsoft 365 suite as part of Microsoft's efforts to modernize its solutions and phase out legacy tools. Since this tool is only a basic trigger-based notification system, its depreciation will pave the way for an alternative tool, Rules, to take its place. Rules can be used with Power Automate to introduce alert-based automation for SharePoint Online.

When is SharePoint Alerts retiring?

If you’ve relied on SharePoint Alerts to keep track of changes in SharePoint Online or SharePoint Server, it is time to prepare for a shift. Microsoft announced the retirement timeline for SharePoint Alerts on the SharePoint blog. With Alerts gone, admins will need to rethink how they track site activity. The good news? They will not be left without options.

Here's the timeline for the deprecation:

• July 2025: New SharePoint Alerts will no longer be available for newly created tenants. Tenants that were created before July 2025 can still use the feature.
• September 2025: The ability to create new SharePoint Alerts will be turned off for every Microsoft 365 tenant.
• October 2025: An expiration feature will be activated for all SharePoint Alerts. Each alert will expire 30 days after it is last triggered. You will be able to manually extend the expiration for another 30 days. To do this, go to Manage my alerts, select the alert you want to update, and extend its expiration date.
• By July 2026, the SharePoint Alerts feature will be completely removed. At this point, existing alerts can no longer be extended and will stop working.

What are SharePoint Rules?

In 2020, Microsoft introduced Rules for SharePoint Online, bringing in the same SharePoint notification functionality in a modern UI along with new features.

These are the features that differentiate SharePoint Rules from Alerts:

• Condition-based notifications
• Follow-up modifications
• Automation with Power Automate

Condition-based notifications

SharePoint Alerts send notifications for three states: creation, deletion, and modification. Since alerts trigger on every modification, admins often avoid enabling them broadly. This limits alerts to only the most sensitive documents, leaving other important files without coverage.

On the other hand, Rules can be configured to be triggered only when the event meets a certain criteria. For example, if a specific column is modified by a set person, the alert is triggered only if the modification satisfies a given value.

Follow-up modifications

You can configure SharePoint Rules to set column values automatically. For example, when a modification rule is triggered, metadata can be updated natively, such as tagging documents or logging changes.

Automation with Power Automate

SharePoint Rules can be integrated with Power Automate, Microsoft's low-code automation platform, to create more complex and powerful workflows. This integration allows you to trigger a wide range of actions beyond simple notifications or column value changes.

For example, when a specific rule is triggered, you can automatically start a multi-step approval process, generate a new document, or post a message to a Microsoft Teams channel.

How to configure SharePoint Rules

Rules can be configured for SharePoint lists, libraries, and file types that support a column such as XLSX. Follow these steps on how to set up SharePoint email notifications with Rules:

1. Select the file you want to apply the rule for.
2. Click the three dot icon on the top ribbon, navigate to Automate > Rules > Create a rule.
3. Select the type of trigger for your rule from any of the four options:
   • File or metadata modified
   • File added
   • File deleted
   • An approaching date
   
4. Select the conditions for your rules, add a custom message, and click Create.

That is how you can create a rule to get SharePoint list notifications when any change occurs.

Where SharePoint Rules as a SharePoint Alerts alternative falls short

While SharePoint Rules offer a quick way to trigger simple actions like sending an email or updating a column when conditions are met, their use is far from a full automation solution or even a complete notification solution. Here's why:

• Narrower object scope: Rules can only be applied at the list or library level. This means you cannot directly target a specific folder or an individual file or item like you could with Alerts.
• Multiple granular triggers: Rules don’t support more granular trigger conditions such as threshold-based alerts (e.g., only notify if more than five changes occur). They also cannot monitor multiple columns at once or restrict actions to a defined time window. They are locked to a single-column, immediate-response logic. This makes them less effective for complex monitoring scenarios.
• Lack of a summary report: Rules fire every time their condition is met, producing individual notifications for each event. In a high-activity library, this can quickly overwhelm your inbox. Alerts, on the other hand, offer daily or weekly digest options, consolidating all relevant changes into a single, easy-to-scan report.

If you wished to create workarounds to counter these issues, you would need to integrate your rules with Power Automate or write custom Graph PowerShell scripts. However, configuring this can be time-consuming and requires a separate subscription.

These reasons are why some admins have not made the shift from SharePoint Alerts to Rules. Even when admins attempt to switch from SharePoint Alerts to Rules, the transfer is incomplete as many notification and reporting capabilities don’t carry over to the new workflow. This is an operational gap that ManageEngine M365 Manager Plus can fill.

How ManageEngine M365 Manager Plus improves SharePoint Alerts

M365 Manager Plus is a comprehensive administration and security solution for Microsoft 365. It is used for reporting on, managing, monitoring, auditing, and creating alerts for critical activities in your Microsoft 365 environments, which includes all of SharePoint Online as well.

Here’s how M365 Manager Plus brings SharePoint Alerts and more to your environment.

Custom, granular SharePoint alerts

Expand on native SharePoint Rules and Alerts with fine-tuned, condition-based triggers. Unlike Rules, which trigger only at the list or library level, M365 Manager Plus enables folder- and file-level alerts, multiple condition grouping, and filtering by event type, user, or timestamp, all in a single, consolidated notification. Notifications can be delivered instantly to chosen recipients only when your chosen threshold (i.e., number of times the trigger occurs) is crossed, ensuring you only get alerted when it matters.

Scheduled SharePoint Online audit

Run targeted SharePoint Online activity checks on an hourly, daily, weekly, or custom schedule without any scripting or complex setup. Choose from built-in reports like file access or permission changes, or create your own with custom views and pre-applied filters. Have them delivered automatically to your inbox or exported for compliance

There are even more benefits to using M365 Manager Plus to manage and monitor your Microsoft 365 environment:

• Easily manage users, groups, contacts, mailboxes, teams, and sites in bulk without Graph PowerShell scripting.
• Gain a thorough understanding of your environment not just in SharePoint Online, but also Microsoft Entra ID, Exchange Online, OneDrive for Business, Microsoft Teams, and other Microsoft 365 services, with detailed reports and intuitive visualizations, all from a single console.
• Keep tabs on even the most granular user activities in your Microsoft 365 environment.
• Configure alert profiles in M365 Manager Plus to get notified of specific activities that take place outside of business hours or occur at unusual frequencies.
• Monitor the health and performance of Microsoft 365 features and endpoints around the clock.
• Delegate granular permissions to technicians without elevating their Microsoft 365 privileges and create custom roles with any combination of reporting, management, and auditing tasks.

SharePoint Alerts will sunset by July 2026. If you want granular alerts, digest reporting, and cross‑workload monitoring without rebuilding flows, M365 Manager Plus gives you that continuity today.

Download the free, 30-day trial of M365 Manager Plus to explore these features and capabilities for yourself. Contact us for a free, personalized demo to discover how to best secure your Microsoft 365 environment using these features.