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 SQL Server use the same 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
To set the mail profile for SQL Server Agent