Alerting Operators

You can choose which operators are to be notified in response to an alert. For example, you can assign rotating responsibilities for operator notification by scheduling alerts. For example, Individual A is notified of alerts that occur on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, and Individual B is notified of alerts that occur on Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday. If either individual cannot be notified, or if the alert occurs on Sunday, the fail-safe operator is notified instead. For information about creating operators, see Defining Operators.

You notify operators using one or more of these methods:

• E-mail notification
• Pager notification
• net send notification

To send e-mail, SQL Server Agent can use either Database Mail, which uses Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), or SQL Mail, which uses Extended MAPI. The configuration requirements differ depending on which system you use to send e-mail.

If you use SQL Mail to send e-mail, SQL Server Agent service uses a mail session that is exclusive to SQL Server Agent activities. If you also use a SQL Mail session for the SQL Server service, we recommend that SQL Server Agent and Microsoft SQL Server use the same Microsoft Windows domain user account. This allows both mail sessions to use the same mail profile. If SQL Server Agent service and SQL Server service use separate domain user accounts, you must configure a mail profile for each service. For more information about using SQL Mail, see SQL Mail How-to Topics.

If you use Database Mail to send e-mail, you configure SQL Server Agent to use a specific Database Mail profile. For more information about using Database Mail, see Database Mail How-to Topics.

The following are common tasks associated with alerting operators:

To define the response to an alert

• SQL Server Management Studio
• Transact-SQL
• SQL Server Management Objects (SMO)

To set the mail profile for SQL Server Agent

• SQL Server Management Studio

See Also

Concepts

Configuring Extended MAPI Mail Profiles
SQL Server Agent Mail

Other Resources

AddNotification Method
AlertSystem Object
Operator Object
sp_add_alert (Transact-SQL)
sp_add_operator (Transact-SQL)
sp_help_notification (Transact-SQL)
sp_help_operator (Transact-SQL)

Help and Information

Getting SQL Server 2005 Assistance

Change History

Release	History
14 April 2006	New content: Added cross references to Database Mail how-to topics and SQL Mail how-to topics. Added that Database Mail uses SMTP and that SQL Mail uses Extended MAPI.