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.
- 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 Group can be created in Contacts. Once created, the group or list name 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. 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.
- Mailman lists is a software application that manages group communication. To use it, you'll need to request a mailman (listserv) list. Lehigh staff manage the software.
Google groups and Mailman lists 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.