# Alerts

Alerts allow you to make end users aware of new content that matches their interests. The IDOL alerting process matches documents against the agents in IDOL Server. When a document matches a user’s agent, IDOL Server sends an e-mail to that user, with a message that you configure.

Alerting is an easy way to keep users up to date with content. You can configure IDOL Server to automatically match new content against existing agents when the document is being indexed. You can also schedule alerting to run at regular intervals, or run it at any other time.

Related Topics

- Agents

## Set up Alert E-mail

With alerting, you can configure an e-mail template that defines what the user receives. In this template, you define the message that you want to send to the users. You can include variables, which IDOL Server replaces with content from the document, or properties of the document or the agent that triggered the alert.

In addition, you can also configure:

- the user name and e-mail address that the alert e-mail is sent from.

- the subject of the e-mail.

- whether to send the document as an attachment to the e-mail.

- an XSLT style sheet to use for the alert template.

## Use Alerts

Alerting is an easy, automatic process that allows you to let users know about important or relevant documents, using a familiar messaging approach.

For example, you could use alerts:

- on a job search Web site, to alert users to new job openings that match their criteria.

- on a property search Web site to alert users to new properties available for rent or purchase.

- on a dating Web site to alert users of potential new matches.

_FT_HTML5_bannerTitle.htm