Email communications sometimes need to go out to the same group of people on a regular basis. Depending on your needs there are various ways to accomplish this at Lehigh. Here are some of the most common methods that are used.
- Group names or lists in email. Most email clients support the ability to create a group "nickname" for a pre-determined list of email addresses. In Thunderbird, a List can be created in the Address Book, while in Lehigh Gmail a Group Lehigh Google Groups is one of the G Suite applications available to Lehigh. Google Groups is highly configurable and easy to manage in that it has a menu-driven interface, and subscribers can manage their membership through a similar easy interface. Google Groups is self-managed, that is you don't need to ask LTS to setup or create a group for you. In addition to being used for mail, Google groups can also be used for sharing calendars, inviting people to events, and g drive file and folder sharing.
- Contacts - In Lehigh Gmail, a "Contact Group" can be created in Contacts. Once created, the the group or list name i is used to insert multiple predetermined email recipients into the TO: line. For example, a list named "buildingcontacts" could be used to store the email addresses of staff. This is a suitable solution when the list does not change very often and when the list is not overly large.
- A listserv is a software application that manages group communication. Usually one or two moderators manage the listserv and the people who receive listserv messages are subscribers. The moderators determine how a listserv functions. Listservs can be announcement-only (a few people communicate to many) or subscribers can post to the list. Moderators decide who can sign up, whether they can sign up, who can send messages, how subscribers communicate, etc. Listservs are more powerful and flexible than groups or lists in email, but they have a learning curve for both the moderators and the subscribers. Lehigh has two listserv software applications, mailman (preferred) and listserv.
- Lehigh Google Groups. Lehigh Google Groups is one of the Google applications available to Lehigh. Google Groups is highly configurable and easy to manage in that it has a menu-driven interface, and subscribers can manage their membership through a similar easy interface. You can view some Google Groups at lehigh.edu/google to see existing Groups and test drive the functionality. Google Groups is hosted on G Suite.
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- If you use a contacts group, if you don't want everyone to see who you sent your message to, use the BCC option when composing the message.
Google groups have at least one owner / moderator / manager who controls the settings of the list and possibly the membership. They can be configured to send to internal / external users. Some lists are configured to be announcement-only type lists for sending out communications, but not discussion, while others are most open to discussion allow list members or even anyone access to post to the list.