Alert Management recognizes predefined critical situations and informs interested or responsible parties by sending them an alert immediately. Examples of critical situations might be an important customer terminating a contract or a budget being exceeded. The alerts are delivered to the recipients in their alert inboxes, which are located in the enterprise portal. They can also be delivered using other channels, such as by Internet mail or to mobile devices.

The Alert Framework is provided as part of the SAP Web Application Server. The application must define its own alert categories and implement the triggering of the alert instances to realize Alert Management. (For more information, see Defining Alert Categories and Triggering Alerts.) Alerts can also be triggered by external alert providers. They are all sent to the alert inboxes of the alert recipients, but can additionally be sent by other channels, such as by Internet mail, SMS, or to external alert systems. You must configure and schedule the processing of the alerts to meet your requirements.

An application triggers an alert of a particular alert category based on an important or critical business or technical situation. (For more information, see Triggering Alerts.) The alert recipients are determined either by the application, by an administrator, or using a subscription procedure. (For more information, see Recipient Determination.) An alert outlining the situation is delivered to the recipients immediately. The alert is delivered to the recipients in their alert inbox within the enterprise portal, but can also be delivered using other channels as well, if the recipients have made the appropriate settings. If the receipt of the alert is not confirmed by any of the recipients, the alert can be sent to an escalation recipient.