A client recently contacted me with an unusual problem. They reported that when they attempted to resolve an alert in the Active Alerts view, they kept getting the following error:

The resolution state on one or more alerts could not be modified due to being out of sync with the server. Please try the operation again.

This can happen when an alert raised by an agent has a created date or created time that is set in the future.

For example, if you set an alert resolution to closed, the resolution state of closed is displayed if the Resolution State column is visible in the view. However, the alert resolution state remains in its original state if one of the following is true:

• The view is refreshed.
• A new view or a new node is selected, and then the original alert view is revisited.

This is a known issue, and is outlined in MSKB 957135. Microsoft have subsequently released a hotfix to resolve this issue. More details are available here