Can Sharepoint 2010 be setup to send an alert with changes only

Question

We are using sharepoint alerts to send out wiki page change notices. However, when the wiki page is very complex, it is difficult to see exactly what changed.

Is it possible to setup the sharepoint alerts to only send the added/modified/removed lines?

Answer 1

I think best way to look for changes is in Page History [button under Page tab] of that particular item. The changes are highlighted in a very user friendly way.

Answer 2

Yes, but this would require custom coding. You would need to know how to access the version history and compare the fields that have changed to the current values and how to build the custom alert and email. This is for 2007 but should still be very applicable.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948321/en-us

Answer 3

Even thogh the link above would work, I think that's going to be more of a challenge and cumbersome to implement. The way I would do it is to use an Event Receiver. Something like this should suffice. (I've left the last two methos not implemented:

public override void ItemUpdating(SPItemEventProperties properties)
{
    base.ItemUpdating(properties);
    var li = properties.ListItem;

    string currentContent = li["FieldToCheck"].ToString();
    var liVersions = li.Versions;

    int PreviousVersionID = liVersions[liVersions.Count - 1].VersionId;
    string previousContent = li.Versions[PreviousVersionID]["FieldToCheck"].ToString();

    var difference = DoComparisonAndReturnDifference(currentContent, previousContent);
    SendEmail(difference);
}