Alerting Operators

You can choose the operators to be notified in response to an alert. You can assign rotating responsibilities for operator notification by using pagers. For example, if one or more defined alerts occur on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, Mary is notified. If those alerts occur on Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday, Joe is notified. If Mary or Joe cannot be notified on the respective day, or if the alert occurs on Sunday, the fail-safe operator is notified.

You notify operators using one or more of these methods:

• E-mail
  
  
• Pager
  
  
• net send

The SQLServerAgent service uses a mail session that is exclusive to SQL Server Agent activities. If you are using a SQL Mail session for the MSSQLServer service, it is recommended that SQL Server Agent and Microsoft® SQL Server™ use the same Microsoft Windows NT® 4.0 or Windows® 2000 domain user account. This allows both mail sessions to use the same mail profile. If SQL Server Agent and SQL Server use separate domain user accounts, you must configure a mail profile for each service.

To define the response to an alert