Group email

Overview
Customizing Group email
Reading messages in Group email
Sending mail to site participants via Group email
Controlling who may send Group email messages
Default permissions for the Group email tool
Sending messages
Receiving messages
Searching for a message
Adding Group email to your site
Deleting a Group email message
Message formatting and attachments in Group email
Controlling the number of Group email messages displayed
Setting a Group email alias

Additional materials

Open a pdf document containing step-by-step instructions with screen shots.

Overview

What it does

Each site has an automatically generated site email address, which you can view in the Group email feature. Email sent to the site email address is copied to all site participants and owners.

All messages sent to your site's email address are stored in Group email. Each message sent to site participants will indicate if there is an attachment, and provide a link to get the attachment from the worksite itself.

Members of the group can choose how often they want to receive email sent to the site's email address in the Preferences feature in My Workspace.

Key concepts

Mail Alias: Site owners can create an easy-to-remember alias for the site's email address. To set up the alias see Setting a Group email alias.

Things to consider

Instructors can use Group email to automatically update email groups for subject sites . As students drop or add the subject, they will automatically be dropped or added from the email group.
Users who participate in more than one site can choose to receive email either as it is sent, or in digest mode, with all posts for the day sent in a single email message.
Messages can be sent from any email program to the email address listed at the top of your Group email page.
Clicking a column header (From, Subject, or Sent) will sort the messages by that header.
When sorting by subject, clicking the up arrow will arrange the messages alphabetically. When sorting by date received, clicking the up arrow will order the messages from most recent to oldest. In both cases, clicking the down arrow reverses the order.
The Group email tool uses plain text to format messages, even if their original format was HTML or rich text. Site participants can view a message in its original format by clicking the link provided in Group email.
Group email uses links to handle attachments. Instead of receiving an attachment directly in the body of an email message, site participants can click a link to view the attachment. This feature helps prevent site participants from going over quota. (Back to top)

Customizing Group email

Note: To complete the procedures in this section, you must be assigned a role having the necessary permissions. To determine your role, see Participant roles in Permissions, Roles & Sites. For a basic understanding of roles and permissions, see Permissions, Roles & Sites: Overview.

View options

To customize the way you view a Group email, follow these steps:

In the menubar of the relevant subject site or project site, click Group email.
Use the drop-down menu above the list of messages to change the number of messages displayed on each page.
Click the heading of any column of the message list to sort by that column. Click the heading again to change the display order from ascending to descending, or from descending to ascending.

Access options

To customize how messages are sent to a Group email, follow these steps:

In the menubar of the relevant subject site or project site, click Group email.
Click Options.
On the next screen, you can click the appropriate radio button to have messages accepted from anyone, or only from users with site access. You can also change the alias email address for addressing email to the participants of this worksite.
Once you have made your desired changes, click Update Options. (Back to top)

Permissions

To control permissions for Group email, follow these steps:

In the menubar of the relevant subject site or project site, click Group email.
Click Permissions.
Place ticks in the appropriate boxes to control which roles will be able to create, read, revise, and delete messages in the Group email.
When you have made your changes, click Save. (Back to top)

Reading messages in Group email

To read messages in Group email, follow these steps:

From the menubar, click Group email.
To navigate through pages of messages, use the arrows above the Date Received column header. Click > to go to the next page, and < to go to the previous page. Click |< to go to the first page of messages, and >| to go to the last pages of messages.
You may also search the archive using the Search box and button.
When you locate the message you want to read, click its highlighted subject line to read it. The Next Email and Previous Email buttons allow you to move from message to message. Click View Headers to see the full headers, and Hide Headers to hide them.
While viewing a message, you may remove it from the archive (if you have sufficient permissions) by clicking Delete. On the following confirmation screen, click Remove to complete the deletion, or click Cancel to return to the message without deleting it. (Back to top)

Sending mail to site participants via Group email

To send email to every member of your subject or project site , follow these steps:

In the menubar of your subject or project site, click Group email. If you don't see Group email, the site leader (or someone with the proper permissions) must add it to the site; for instructions see Adding Group email to your site.
On the Group email screen, under "Email sent to the following addresses will be archived and sent to participants", you'll see the site email address. Above it, you'll also see the email address from which you are authorized to send email; use this account to send messages to the site address. Messages will go to all participants in your subject or project site, and will be archived online in the Group email.

Note: You cannot use Group email to send messages to particular individuals. Messages sent to your site's email address are received by all site participants. (Back to top)

Controlling who may send Group email messages

In a subject or project site, you can determine who may send Group email messages by following these steps:

In the menubar of the project or subject site, click Group email.
Click the Options... button.
Under "Accept messages from", click the radio button beside Anyone to allow anyone to send mail to the archive, or click Only site participants to so restrict sending.
Click Save.

Note: Use of the Permissions button on the main Group email screen can affect this setting, so be sure your settings are compatible. (Back to top)

Default permissions for the Group email tool

The default Subject site permission settings for the Group email tool are as shown below. These can only be altered by a site member who has appropriate permissions.

(Back to top)

Sending messages

You can send messages to your site's participants from your email account with your preferred email client (e.g., Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, Mac OS X Mail, or Thunderbird). All messages will be stored in the Group email and visible to all participants. To view your site's email address, in the menubar, click Group email. For more information, see Sending mail to site participants via Email Archive.

Note: Messages sent to the site's email address will go to all participants (i.e., you can't send email to individual participants using Email Archive).(Back to top)

Receiving messages

Messages are sent to the email address in your profile. You do not need to log into the application to read your mail. However, if you do not wish to receive mail from the site, or if you'd rather receive mail in a daily digest format, you can change your notification preferences from your My Workspace . For instructions, see Changing notification preferences in My Workspace. (Back to top)

Searching for a message

To search for a word in the email messages within an archive, follow these steps:

In the menubar of the subject site or project site containing the archive, click Group email.
In the text box near the top of the screen, type the word you want to search for, and then click Search.

Note: The Group email search is not case sensitive. Also, you can search only for a single word. Do not use quotation marks around your search term unless you are searching for a term in quotation marks.

A list of search results will appear. You may click the linked subject line to view a message. Once you are viewing a message, click Return to List to return to your search results. Click View Headers while viewing a message to see the full headers; click Hide Headers to hide them (the button toggles between these two options).
On the search results screen, click Clear Search or the reset button to return to the default Group email display (the list of all email messages in the archive). Or you may search the archive again. (Back to top)

Adding Group email to your site

Adding Group email to your site activates an email address that your site participants can use to communicate with each other. Email sent to your site's email address is copied to all site participants and owners, and all messages are stored in the Group email.

Note: You cannot use Group email to send messages to particular individuals. Messages sent to your site's email address are received by all site participants.

To add Group email to your site's menubar, follow the steps:

In your site's menubar, click Site Info.
Near the top, click Edit Tools.
Under "Revising site tools for...", tick the box next to Group email, and then scroll down and click Continue.
Under "Group email", in the field next to "Site email address", enter a site email address (e.g., history-spring-09 ). This will be the name, title, or label (i.e., alias) that goes before the @ in your subject email address.
Click Continue, and on the subsequent confirmation screen, click Finish to return to the Site Info screen. You should now be able to see and click Group email in your site's menubar. (Back to top)

Deleting a Group email message

To delete an Group email message, follow these steps:

In the menubar of the relevant subject or project site, click Group email.
Click the linked subject of the message you want to delete to open it, and then click Delete.
Click Remove to confirm the deletion. (Back to top)

Message formatting and attachments in Group email

Group email uses plain text to format messages, even if their original format was HTML or rich text. If a message is sent in a format other than plain text, site participants can view it in its original format by clicking the link provided in the Group email message.

Group email also uses links to handle attachments. Instead of receiving an attachment directly in the body of an email message, site participants can click a link to view the attachment. This feature helps prevent site participants from going over quota.

Note: Staff have a responsibility to familiarise themselves with guidelines on appropriate copyright compliance relating to the use of resources attached to group emails. See http://www.csu.edu.au/copyright/information/interact-staff-guide.pdf for more information.

An extensive set of resources relating to copyright issues for staff and students can be found at http://www.csu.edu.au/copyright/

(Back to top)

Controlling the number of Group email messages displayed

Group email displays a default number of messages, and this number cannot be modified for an entire subject or project site . As an individual site participant, however, you can control the number of Group email messages displayed by doing the following:

In the menubar of the relevant subject site or project site, click Group email.
Use the drop-down list located just above the message list to control the number of messages displayed.
Note: You can modify this setting for each site containing Group email. Your individual preference will automatically be saved for each site in which you set it. (Back to top)

Setting a Group email alias

You can create an easy-to-remember alias address for your Group email by following these steps:

In the menubar of the relevant subject site or project site, click Group email.
Click Options.
In the "Site Email Address" field, type the alias you want to use as the initial part of the email address for the archive (i.e., the part before the @ symbol).
Click Update Options.
You will now see your alias address as well as the autogenerated address on the main Group email screen, for example: Email sent to the following addresses will be archived and sent to participants: german112@interact.csu.edu.au 1105113863261-20909@interact.csu.edu.au

In this example, german112 was the alias entered in the third step. (Back to top)