Many departments would like to communicate with targeted populations of students and/or faculty and staff for a variety of reasons. With an increasing number of offices wanting this capability, the University needs to effectively administer these requests so that @temple.edu addresses do not become a repository for Temple spam. Any department desiring to send out a mass mailing to students must adhere to the Student Electronic Information (E-mail) Policy. Any department desiring to send out a mass e-mailing to faculty and/or staff must follow the rules herein.
Listserv Lists
One way to effectively reach a large group of individuals is by the use of a listserv list. By sending one message to an address that corresponds to a list of e-mail addresses, mail can be quickly dispersed.
Most announcements to the general Temple community should be channeled to the Office of News and Media Relations for approval to distribute on the Temple Today list. It is a voluntary list where the participants have agreed that they want to be notified of Temple events. They can remove themselves at any time.
Three kinds of lists can be created: official, unofficial, and voluntary. An official list is one where a particular office has Vice Presidential/Provost level permission to distribute messages to various populations across the university. Individuals cannot remove themselves from official lists.
Currently Computer Services maintains official lists of various populations for the President's Office, the Executive Vice President's Office, the Provost's Office and Business Services. Other departments may request to have an official listserv list; however, the Vice President for Computer Services must approve the initial creation of any official list. The person in charge of the list is responsible for updating the list periodically with @temple.edu addresses extracted from a pre-canned selection report.
All requests to contact various populations of faculty outside of one's school/college are directed to Stephanie Gillin in the Provost's office. The Provost's Office determines whether the announcement is appropriate for mass distribution to faculty on one of its official lists.
An unofficial list is one that a Dean's office or other high-level administrative unit can create. A student or employee has the ability through their Cherry and White page entry to utilize a feature that determines whether they are willing to receive mail from Temple departments apart from the official mailings.
Therefore, e-mail from an unofficial list should provide the following instructions at the end of the list:
“To remove yourself from this list please go to http://directory.temple.edu, and click on Update Your Entry. Choose the option to Exclude me from Departmental & Organizational Mailing Lists .”
When individuals have chosen this option, they should not receive any future postings from unofficial lists. The list owner must take steps to ensure that messages are not sent to these individuals. List owners should consult with their Administrative Computer Services User Liaisons about querying ISIS to acquire a list of e-mail addresses corresponding to those who have not expressed a preference to be omitted from unofficial lists.
A voluntary list is one to which an individual initiates membership. Anyone can subscribe to a list at Temple that is of interest to them by going to http://listserv.temple.edu/archives. Some lists are configured to restrict membership, so not all the lists at this location are available for open subscription. A voluntary list can be created for an employee or student organization at the Computer Services Help Desk. The owner of such a list must be an @temple.edu address.
Mass E-mail Restrictions:
Announcements going out to more than 1,000 @temple.edu recipients need to be scheduled in advance because of system implications. They cannot be sent out between 8:30am and 5:00pm. One of these Computer Services staff members should be notified in advance of mass mailings: Sheri Stahler, Jim Papacostas, or Charles Mathew.
Attachments must not be sent out to large groups. Instead the attachments should be located on a Web site and referenced by the email message to be sent out. (This rule applies to any large mailing.)
Messages must be FERPA, HIPPA and GLBA compliant.
Any mass announcement that needs to go out immediately during the day requires approval by the Vice President for Computer Services.
Other methods of electronic communication:
Gammadyne Overview
Gammadyne is a powerful email automation utility that has the versatility to handle almost any incoming or outgoing email operation. It can send personalized text or HTML email to a list of recipients located in a database or text file. It can also process virtually any type of incoming email, including bounce-backs, sign-ups, and opt-outs. Gammadyne Mailer's unmatched set of features includes multi-tasking, direct delivery, list-serving, auto-responding, auto-forwarding, command line support, exclusion lists, unlimited mailing list size, message preview, personalized attachments, duplicate elimination, and much more. Advanced list management features make it easy to add, change, verify, and remove recipients from the mailing list. For complex situations, you can use a powerful scripting language called G-Merge that has the versatility to automate even the most difficult of tasks.
Requirements to use Gammadyne
Because Gammadyne is such a powerful email utility, Computer Services requests that the user attend training class for Gammadyne prior to using the software. In addition, all the rules governing the mass announcements apply to Gammadyne usage. To learn more about Gammadyne, employees should contact their Administrative Computer Services User Liaison for more information.
