Currently the ${StatusOrErrorDescription} macro is limited to component monitors. This would be greatly beneificial for alerting on Application status as opposed to Component status.
Below is a listing of similar macros that can be used for Applications, although they only give the status (Down, Up, Unknown, etc). There is no currently a way to get the actual error generated by a component from within an application alert.
${ComponentsWithProblems}
${ComponentsWithProblemsFormatted}
${ComponentsWithProblemsFormattedHtml}
${ComponentsWithStatus}
${ComponentsWithStatusFormatted}
${ComponentsWithStatusFormattedHtml}