Suggested Use of Group Everyone in WPO Mail

        By Dr. Philip Baczewski, Assistant Director of Academic Computing (baczewski@unt.edu)

        This is an edited version of an article that appeared in the September/October 1993 issue of Benchmarks (Vol. 14, No. 5, pg. 32).

        The following suggestions are offered concerning the broadcast of messages to a wide range of on-campus E-mail recipients, and specifically, to the Word Perfect Office (WPO) Mail distribution group EVERYONE.

        1. In general, use of any UNT electronic mail system should support the mission and goals of the University.

        2. Since electronic mail to WPO group EVERYONE reaches a broad spectrum of faculty, staff, administrators, and students, it should be used with the same discretion as any other form of business communication distributed campus-wide. One should employ the same criteria as one would use in judging whether to send out an on-paper memo to all faculty and staff: Is the message of sufficient interest to be broadcast to a general population? Is it informational, or does it request information from a wide variety of individuals? Is it University-related business?

        3. When appropriate, distribution groups smaller than WPO Mail s EVERYONE should be used to distribute messages. For example, other groups are available (press [F5], and select Groups), such as NTFACLTY, the group containing UNT faculty who use WPO Mail. (Unfortunately, these groups are greatly in need of cleaning up, however, you may still find your target audience in one of them.) Messages can also be sent to all users on one particular Novell host file server. Personal groups, listing a number of individuals, can be easily created, modified, and shared with other users.

        4. For some types of messages, alternatives to E-mail broadcasts should be used. USENET News is a facility which supports mail-like discussion groups. UNT has some local USENET groups, such as UNT.GENERAL or UNT.ANNOUNCE which may be used for general inquiries or announcements. Additional local groups can be created if there is a need. Gopher is a system which can allow departments to submit information for general viewing. Both of these facilities are still being developed on our campus and may not yet be available on your file server. [Contact your network manager or Computing Center Support Services (ext. 2324) for more information.]

        5. Remember, WPO s EVERYONE does not include all members of the University. Even among all network computer users, there are many who communicate exclusively via other mail systems such as Pegasus Mail.

        A WPO Mail Tip

        Many people complain about the interruption caused by WPO Mail s notification. As a sender of a WPO Mail message, you can specify that your message NOT notify the recipient (press [F8], Message, Notify, No). In this way, the recipient will not be aware that a new message has arrived until he/she enters the WPO Mail program. Also, be aware that the incoming message notification feature is configurable (i.e. it can be disabled for your network account); contact your network manager for more information.



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