💡 Our Technical Review in summary
Summary
- Microsoft has announced the phased retirement of the classic SharePoint Alerts feature, transitioning users toward Power Automate and SharePoint Rules.
- The retirement process begins in July 2025 and concludes with the complete removal of the feature in July 2026.
- This change is intended to provide a more modern, versatile notification system with better integration across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.
- Power Automate templates have been provided to replicate “Item Created” and “Item Changed” alert scenarios for both lists and libraries.
Impact
- Timeline of Restrictions:
- July 2025: New tenants will no longer be able to create new SharePoint Alerts.
- October 2025: An expiration policy is introduced. All SharePoint Alerts will expire 30 days after their first run. Users must manually re-enable/extend them via the “Manage my alerts” menu to keep them active.
- January 2026: The ability to create new SharePoint Alerts will be disabled for all remaining tenants.
- July 2026: Full retirement. All existing SharePoint Alerts will stop functioning, and the extension option will be removed.
- User Experience: Between October 2025 and July 2026, users will see banners in SharePoint and notification emails regarding the retirement. They will be required to self-service their alert extensions every 30 days.
- Service Disruption: Any critical business processes relying on classic SharePoint Alerts will fail after July 2026 if not migrated to an alternative solution.
Action Required
- Inventory Assessment: Use the Microsoft 365 Assessment tool to scan your environment and identify active SharePoint Alerts across all sites.
- Migration Planning: Transition existing alerts to Power Automate (for complex logic) or SharePoint Rules (for simple notifications). Microsoft provides specific templates for “Changes to an item,” “Someone else changes an item,” and “Item created” scenarios.
- User Training: Update internal documentation and Help Desk scripts to reflect the new 30-day expiration mechanism starting in October 2025 and the final retirement in 2026.
- Governance: Direct users to the Power Automate template gallery (make.powerautomate.com) to find pre-built replacements for classic alert functionality.
- Note: There is no administrative option to extend the July 2026 deadline; all migrations must be completed before this date.
Microsoft Official Update
Service: N/A
Category: planForChange
Severity: normal
Updated October 22, 2025: We have updated the content below with Power Automate templates to assist in this transition.
Microsoft is retiring the SharePoint Alerts feature to streamline and modernize user notifications. With Power Automate, organizations can benefit from an enhanced, versatile solution that goes beyond traditional alerts, offering seamless integration across Microsoft 365 services and more.
Key Points
- Major: Retirement
- Timeline:
- Starting from July 2025, the creation of new SharePoint Alerts will be gradually turned off for newly onboarding tenants.
- Starting from October 2025, the SharePoint Alert expiration feature will be gradually activated. Once activated, any SharePoint Alert will have a validity of 30 days starting from its first run, then it will expire. Users can self-service re-enable expired SharePoint Alerts and extend their expiration for another 30 days. Re-enabling and extending SharePoint Alerts can be done by using the “Manage my alerts” list/library menu item, opening the SharePoint Alert to update, extending its expiration date and clicking OK. For more details refer to this support article.
- Starting from January 2026, the creation of new SharePoint Alerts will be gradually turned off for all tenants.
- Starting July 2026, Microsoft will remove the ability to use SharePoint Alerts, existing SharePoint Alerts cannot be extended anymore and will not work anymore.
- Action: Review and assess impact
How this will affect your organization
If your organization still uses SharePoint Alerts, they will no longer function from July 2026 onwards. We recommend customers to port their SharePoint Alerts to the Power Automate platform or alternatively create a SharePoint Rule. To help you with the transition to Power Automate the following set of Power Automate templates can be used by either browsing https://make.powerautomate.com/templates and searching for the template name or alternatively using the links. Template names and links are in the table below.
| Classic Alerts Scenario | Templates for Lists | Templates for Libraries |
|
Changes to an item |
Send an email when a SharePoint list item or file is updated | |
| Anything changes | Implement this by combining the “Changes to an item” and “Item created” scenario templates | |
| Someone else changes an item | Send an email for changes by others to a SharePoint list item or file | |
| Someone else changes an item created by me | Send an email for changes to a SharePoint list item or file created by me | |
| Item created | Send an email when a SharePoint list item is created | Send an email when a new SharePoint file is created |
What you need to do to prepare
It’s recommended to update your user training content and prepare your help desk to support your organization with this retirement. SharePoint Alerts users will be notified of this feature retirement via banners in both the relevant SharePoint Online page and Alert emails and users can self-service extend the alerts they deem required.
For admins:
- Optionally use the Microsoft 365 Assessment tool to scan your tenants for SharePoint Alerts.
- Review the documentation on using Power Automate with SharePoint Online.
- Review the documentation on using SharePoint Rules.
- Note: There will not be an option to extend SharePoint Alerts beyond July 2026.
Learn more:
- Detailed support article with additional resources.
