Re: [Bodington-developers] Group email

[Jon M. <jo...@te...>]

Alistair Young wrote:

>>Prof. Crusty starts getting emails from something
>>called WebLearn
>>    
>>
>no, the group tool sends emails as the user. They'll get an email from
>"Joe Bloggs", rather than the system.
>  
>
Neat! (I assume you don't allow users to set their own Email address - 
that would be a recipe for disaster. How do you enforce that?  At Leeds 
the mail would have to come from the help desk because users can put any 
email address they like against their account. Sysadmin config option?)

>>participate in a way that is decided by a more junior member of
>>staff
>>    
>>
>email divert - back to using the email tool of choice properly. The emails
>are marked [MOD101].
>  
>
Perfectly reasonable suggestion.  Would you like to Email Prof. Crusty 
and explain it to him?

>>senior members of staff
>>can opt out of irritating Emails
>>    
>>
>ok. I wonder what they do if they don't want to converse with their
>students though.
>  
>
Lock the office door and go quiet when they hear it knock.  Better still 
put the office the other side of a laboratory with lots of biohazard 
signs on the door and dangerous looking equipment inside.

>>secretaries to log in with their user names and passwords
>>    
>>
>well we won't go there. Just coz it happens doesn't mean we support
>extremely bad practice. I'm sure people like the Athens service providers
>would be keen to hear about people like that - and block them!
>  
>
The only thing you can really do with very senior staff is to devote 
masses of staff time to giving them a way to acheive what they want with 
even less personal effort than would be required to break the rules.

>>myuniversity.bulkemail_optout
>>    
>>
>an idea, yes. Have a bin full of people who for some reason or other call
>themselves tutors but don't want communication from students. Could
>probably provide a tool for this for staff use in their user preferences
>page.
>
>  
>
>>will check that the user
>>is NOT in the optout group
>>    
>>
>yep
>
>  
>
>>Either way wouldn't it be a good idea for users to have a personal
>>messaging tool within Bodington?
>>    
>>
>IMHO no. Why reinvent outlook in bod? I'm coming from a purely resource
>perspective though. If someone wants to get funding...
>  
>
Actually, now I think about it I agree.  The thing I really miss in 
Email clients that I've used is the ability to easily group together 
dialogues with specific people, including my replies regardless of the 
subject lines and even if one or other of the people didn't quote the 
other's text.  I.e. a sort which uses the 'from' field on other people's 
messages, the 'to' field on my messages and within chunks of messages 
to/from the same person, chronological. Acheiving anything like this 
involves a lot of fiddling about and you need to know what you are 
trying to acheive.  Something like this would be particularly useful for 
one to one tutoring. However, if you use a log book tool in Bodington, 
that's pretty much what you get.  I'd forgotten.

>>The On-line tool could allow person to person messaging
>>    
>>
>It does that anyway via their email settings in bod. It lets you select
>individual users as well as groups.
>  
>
Cool!

>I think we're converging - it's just case of whether we should implement a
>"sin bin" for the tool. I pool of "tutors" who don't want to be contacted!
>
>Just out of interest - should the tool consult the bin before displaying
>staff users that can be emailed? I suppose so. If the student emails a
>staff member who doesn't want to know then they'll just phone the helpdesk
>to see why they never got a reply.
>  
>
I would put the user's name with a big grumpy face icon, the text 'Prof. 
Crusty does not accept Emails sent from this tool and has told us not to 
reveal his Email address.' and a greyed out check box.

The interesting question is what do you do if Prof. Crusty will accept 
messages from his personal tutees but not from other students. Not 
something for your tool right now but I have some ideas about how to 
deal with this kind of question - it depends on users creating their own 
personal lists of users and assigning roles which indicate relationships 
with them. "My study circle", "My tutors" "My friends" "People who have 
sent me offensive messages and who I never want to message me again."

*********************************************************************************
While the character of Prof. Crusty is based on a real person he has 
been largely fictionalised for the purposes of this Email. Other 
character(s) may or may not be fictionalised amalgams of zero or more 
real or imaginary persons.