SharePoint Online: SharePoint Alerts reborn - Custom Notification System (CNS^SP)

I think a lot of SharePoint users are already informed about the upcoming retirement of the SharePoint built-in feature Alerts 😔.

Retired Alert feature in SharePoint

As you can see in the screenshot, the alert feature will be switched off in July 2026. This means you cannot use this feature anymore.

That's why I decided to implement a custom solution to rescue this function. Let me first give you a quick overview of the solution. My custom solution is based on the following pieces:

• A custom ListView Command Set to integrate a button to each list or library in SharePoint.
• Webhooks to listen for changes.
• To access SharePoint data, my solution needs an Entra app registration. I use an on-behalf-flow for the client app and an app-only flow for the background system.
• To provide the necessary functionality, I use multiple Azure functions to provide REST endpoints and to realize the notification system based on a scheduler trigger.
• And I use an SQL server to store all notification definitions and queue information.

The picture below shows all the components and the relation between them.

Custom notification system architecture overview

The custom SPFx listview component integrates a button in each list or library to open the configuration UI for notifications. I use an on-behalf-of flow to access SharePoint information within the context of the custom app. The custom app saves all notification definitions in a separate SQL server. As soon as a notification is defined for a list or library, a webhook is registered to receive information about changes in the list or library. To send out the notification to users, a background scheduler process is running and evaluates the defined notifications. As soon as a notification must be sent out, the process reads all changes from SharePoint via the client-side object model (CSOM) with app-only token access.

For more explanation and to see how the system works, watch the video.

I plan to finish the first version at the end of April because currently the solution is in beta. The app can be installed in your environment, or you can use a shared hosting model. In shared mode, you do not need to host the Azure functions and the SQL server.

For the final version I want to add the option to send the notifications to a Teams channel, and I want to try to read all existing old SharePoint alert definitions for easy migration.