Hi Aimee,
I believe you do not clearly understand the issue, which I am bothered by as well. It appears to be by-design and is frustrating to those of us using SBS 2011 and the Office 365 Add-In with subcription Plan P1.
Windows Small Business Server 2011 with the Office 365 Add-In, will create a "Critical" alert if your Office 365 subscription is set to expire soon. However, because the Office 365 Plan P1 subscription is on a month-to-month basis, it is ALWAYS going to expire soon (within 30 days).
The result is that we have a constant "Critical" alert from our SBS 2011.
If you delete the alert, it just reappears after a short time. If you click to "ignore" the alert, it stays in the ignored state for a short time but then gets replaced with a new one which you must "ignore" again.
While these solutions provide a temporary fix, I believe we would all like to see the alert function differently. In its current format you have a bit of a "boy who cried wolf" situation where you begin to accept that SBS 2011 "critical" alerts are common and do not really mean anything.
Is there some way to alter the alert functionality through a registry change or something like that?
In my opinion, the alert functionality of the Office 365 Add-In for SBS 2011 should be changed to work in one of the following ways for people on month-to-month Office 365 subscriptions:
1. Either the alert should ONLY occur if there is a credit card error (expired, declined, etc.).
2. Or, if the alert is still going to happen each month no matter what, it should be "Informational" not "Critical"... a reminder of the month-to-month nature of the subscription and a reminder to make sure the credit card information is always up to date... not a "critical" warning of an error.
3. Or even better, give us the choice though the UI of controlling whether or not we get this alert and what its severity is.