One of the most common requests I hear for System Center 2012 Orchestrator is the ability to send out alerts on failure. To keep from having to add multiple send mail activities on every runbook, I have create one runbook that runs at a predetermined interval to check if any runbooks ended with a failure or warning. If a failure or warning is found, it will send out an email with the details of the failed runbook.
The runbook starts with a Monitor Date/Time activity. This activity determines how often to check for updates. Next it formats the date for SQL, then runs a SQL query to determine if any runbooks failed since the monitor started. If any are found they go to the next query to determine that the failure or warning was the last step in the runbook, meaning the runbook failed to complete. If it is the last step then the details of the runbook and the failure text are returned, and an email is sent with the information.
To set this up in your environment, you just need to download the runbook export from here (http://1drv.ms/S07FPi). Then import it into your Orchestrator Runbook Designer. After you import the runbook, you fill find it in a folder named Runbook Alerts. There will also be a folder named Runbook Alerts under Global Settings Variables. You will need to go to this folder and set the variables to match your environment.