How To Use CAHNRS Email Lists and Email List Generator
CAHNRS Mailing
CAHNRS has two separate facilities for sending out email messages to employees. The first is a collection of Lyris email lists with a fixed definition that are updated every morning. The second is an ad hoc list generator accessible via the Intranet menu by going to Reports->Bfo->Email Lists.
Lyris Lists
Lyris has the following email lists:
Academic Faculty + Graduates
- Area: 03
- Employee Types: F and G
- auto_academic_faculty_graduates@lyris.cahnrs.wsu.edu
Research Faculty
- Area: 30
- Employee Types: F
- auto_research_faculty@lyris.cahnrs.wsu.edu
Research Graduates
- Area: 30
- Employee Types: G
- auto_research_graduates@lyris.cahnrs.wsu.edu
Research Faculty + Graduates
- Area: 30
- Employee Types: F and G
- auto_research_faculty_graduates@lyris.cahnrs.wsu.edu
CAHNRS Faculty
- Areas: 03, 30, and 41
- Employee Type: F
- Exclude Title Codes: 0321, 0306 and 0305
- auto_cahnrs_faculty@lyris.cahnrs.wsu.edu
CAHNRS All
- Areas: 03, 30, and 41
- Employee Types: F, G, AP, S, H, U, Public Affiliates, and Adjunct
- auto_cahnrs_all@lyris.cahnrs.wsu.edu
Mail Generator
The email generator accessible via the reports module of CBS is a filterable list of employee appointments in the college. By applying various filters to the list a person is able to create a custom collection of employees. In addition the interface supports the following:
- Export a CSV of the appointment records based on current filters
- Export a semi-colon delimited list of distinct emails based on current filters
- Send an email to the filtered list via a HTML5 WYSIWYG editor
Note that if you export the emails with the intent to email the list of users know that employee exchange email accounts have the following restrictions:
- 1000 distinct recipients per email
- 4 emails per minute
- 2000 distinct recipients in a 24 hour period
- Your email client may have length restrictions on the "to" and "bcc" fields
Data Source
The data source for both the Mail Generator page and the statically defined Lyris lists is the tblPersonnelCurrentAppointments_UNION table, unioned with the vwCAHNRS_CourtesyAppointmentsEmpList view. The result is that, unless otherwise noted in a specific lists definition, all lists members are drawn from current appointments as well as courtesy appointments.
How to Send an Announcement
There are two ways you can send an announcement email; the first and easiest is to use one of the Lyris lists, and the second way is to use the Mail Generator.
Using Lyris
If your target audience is defined by one of the Lyris email lists above then all you need to do to send an announcement is to email the list address that corresponds to your target readers. For example if you wanted to send an email to all research faculty you would send the email to auto_research_faculty@lyris.cahnrs.wsu.edu. In addition to the Lyris lists providing easy and up to date list members every morning, sending an email via these Lyris lists havehas the following benefits:
- Your name and email will be stripped from the email and replaced with CAHNRS.Administration@smtp.wsu.edu
- The reply email address will be set to noreply@wsu.edu
- List members will not be able to see other email recipients on the list
- You bypass the email restrictions in place on most exchange accounts
Note though, that only list administrators can send email to the Lyris lists and have it be delivered. In most cases this is restricted to the Dean and Associate Deans, their assistants, and employees with a demonstrated business need. If you need to be given access to these lists please contact the CWR.
Using the Mail Generator
If your target readers are not defined, or not completely defined by one of the Lyris lists above you may need to use the Email List Generator located in the BFO reports group in CBS. Once loaded you will see a filterable list of current appointments. By applying the relevant filters to the data you will be left with a list of appointments that you intend to mail.
The next step is to go to the drop down header menu, denoted by the "#" in front of the WSUID column, and select one of the export or mailing options. The simplest use case would be to select "Export Email" which will create a text file of semi-colon delimited distinct email address that you can copy and paste into an email client of your choice. Please be mindful of the exchange account limitations, as well as any mail client limitations you may have.
Alternately you can select the MailTo option in the header menu which will open a basic mailing interface with a HTML5 based WYSIWYG editor, with the selected users distinct emails already in the BCC field. Emailing via this interface is not subject to the regular exchange account limitations, or those of most mail clients.
In Conclusion
The Lyris lists and the Mail Generator can be used in conjunction which each other for simple yet flexible mailing. For complicated use cases it is certainly possible to send an email to both a Lyris list, as well as a custom made list of users via the Mail Generator. Questions, bug reports, and feature requests about the mailing systems should be directed to the Reports project in the CAHNRS issue tracker at https://tracker.cahnrs.wsu.edu.