ITS Bulk E-mail Usage Guidelines

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Motivation

Electronic communication (e-mail) has become an essential tool in the business of the Boulder campus and is an official means of communicating with students. E-mail has overtaken hardcopy mailings and facsimile transmissions as the medium of choice for rapidly delivering information to campus constituents. The campus provides a networking and computer infrastructure to support e-mail communication. To ensure the stability and high performance of this infrastructure, it is essential for e-mailers to ensure their mailings are appropriate to the mission of the university and will not negatively impact the performance of the infrastructure.

Guidelines for Appropriate Use of Bulk Mail

Electronic communication with faculty, staff, and students on the Boulder campus must comply with all university and campus policies regarding appropriate use. E-mailings must be related to university business. Student e-mailings must enhance the educational role and mission of the university. Mailings must be performed in a manner that preserves the integrity and performance of the campus network and computer systems e-mail infrastructure.

• Large e-mailings (those in excess of 200 addresses) should not be delivered during campus business hours.
• Large e-mailings should not be artificially divided up so as to avoid the 200-address limitation
• Individuals or departments that wish to send large e-mailings have 3 options:
  1. Use the student ememo or buff bulletin service from Registrar's office
  2. Use the faculty/staff ememo or buff bulletin service from Mailing Services
  3. Send e-mail themselves provided they meet the following criteria:
  • send during non-campus business hours
  • send no more than one message per second; ideally send 10 messages, wait 10 seconds, send 10 more messages, wait 10 seconds, and repeat until all messages are delivered.
  • create a specific e-mail header with a unique identifier to be used by ITS for expiring and removing unread messages
  • non-Campus departments or other University affiliates or non-affiliates must have the approval of the Boulder Campus Student Mailing List Review Committee before sending e-mailings to students

  When attachments are required, consideration should be given to the size of the attachment and number of recipients. Large attachments should be sent to a small number of people, while it is appropriate to send small attachments to many recipients. The total size of the mailing should be minimized to limit impact on system resources, such as disk capacity and processing power. Attachments may be delivered more efficiently by placing one copy on a curricular, departmental or personal web page and instructing recipients to view it online or download a copy to their desktop computer.

For further information contact Sean Myers by phone at 303-492-4778 or e-mail at sean.myers@colorado.edu.

E-mail Policies

The University's policy on email: www.cusys.edu/policies/General/email.html
 
Use of CU-Boulder's Computing and Network Resources: www.colorado.edu/policies/cnr/

Get Help
IT Service Center
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