Just started up with Emerson Electric today as the MOSS Technical Application Administrator. I realize I have alot to learn here. It is a gigantic corporation with many divisions and people.
Fixed my first real test. SharePoint Alert setup can be a major pain and today was the same. The issue was after an alert was set, no outgoing emails were being sent. There are countless posts and threads throughout the web but a couple were needed to fix this issue.
First of all, McAfee Antivirus, that special program, you have to make sure service applications can punch through port 25. Once this is done you don't have to worry about port blocking. Next, making sure the firewall itself allows the program to get out. Guess what.... after fixing the first 2 things.. more was needed. Next I dove into SQL Server to fix table permissions for the content table, allowing the service account to properly access the tables. Last but not least, I had to go into Services and setup the Sharepoint Worker Process to use the proper access account.
So, through a couple hours of trial and error everything is successfully working and all users are receiving their email alerts and notifications.