Did you leave your lights on?

By Claudia Lynch, Benchmarks Online Editor

It's the beginning of a new semester and time to remind you about "Large Group E-mail Guidelines." This is an edited version of an article that appeared in the August, 2000 issue of Benchmarks Online. -- Ed.

How many times have you gotten GroupWise messages announcing that someone's lights are on or some other topic that doesn't seem to warrant a campus-wide heads up? About twice a year the following "Large Group E-mail Guidelines" policy is sent to to all GroupWise users. Please be aware that "bulk mail" sent through GroupWise is to be for UNT business only. (We have a The bulk E-mail service for official communications between UNT and students.)

Please review the following policy as set out by the Vice Presidents and Provost in 1997.

Large Group E-mail Guidelines- 2/17/97:

The Provost and all Vice Presidents recommend the following guidelines for using large E-mail groups:

1. Departments and individuals should be judicious in sending E-mail to all faculty and staff. Many recipients may consider the message to be annoying "junk mail," especially if "everyone" messages continue to proliferate at the current rate. As a general guideline, the message should be of sufficient general value that it would justify being sent as a memorandum if E-mail were not available. In other words, is the message important enough to justify sending to virtually every University employee? Campus-wide discussions should use Usenet news groups, not E-mail.
   
2. All large group mailings should use appropriate mail groups. A public group will be maintained in the GroupWise (GW) address directory that will include all UNT faculty and staff in the GW directory, as well as more limited groups such as department heads and account holders. Offices or individuals that make frequent or regular large group mailings, that are not official notifications to all faculty and staff, are encouraged to maintain their own groups. Messages to these groups should have an introduction indicating willingness to remove an individual from the group if requested by return E-mail.
   
3. Anyone sending mail to large groups should use the GroupWise send options to conserve system resources. In the "Mail To" screen, select "send" and then "send options." For the current mail message, these options will override the typical preferences. Generally, the following send options should be selected:

• no status information
• low priority
• expiration date set to delete unopened messages in two work days
• do not notify recipients unless it is an urgent official message
• no return notification
• no reply requested

Also, from the main GW screen, select "file" and "preferences" to confirm that the "advanced" send option is set to "insert in out box." Then, if a mistake is made, the out box message may be used to "delete" the message from all "in boxes," correct it, and resend. Take care to delete from in boxes, not the out box.