All-Campus Emails & Group Email

There are options for sending emails to targeted TU audiences, and receiving emails that need to be viewed or managed by more than one person in a department.  

Receiving Email as a Group

Departments, project workgroups, student organizations and other groups can receive email as a group in a few different ways:

Email Groups

Faculty/staff groups can use email groups (distribution lists) to communicate within a group. They can be configured flexibly and:

  • can be visible within the Global Address List in Outlook or hidden and only available as a generic email address (such as departmentxyz@towson.edu).
  • can be restricted to only allow faculty/staff to send to them or even restrict senders to those who are members of the list.
  • can't send emails as the email address - they are only appropriate for receiving email and communicating within the group. These groups can only contain faculty/staff. The membership of these groups can be managed by owners of the group using the Group Management web application.

Mailboxes

Shared mailboxes (formerly referred to as "maildrops") are group mailboxes in Outlook created to display a department or organization's name.

  • These shared mailboxes provide a generic email address (such as departmentxyz@towson.edu) that can receive email and and store it in the shared mailbox.
  • Faculty/staff with access to the shared mailbox can view, manage and send email as the email address.
  • Many departments choose to use shared mailboxes when they need to send email to or on behalf of the department. It's common to publish these shared mailbox email addresses on the website.
  • Student organizations can get a shared mailbox if they have a faculty/staff sponsor.
  • Owners of a shared mailbox can choose who has access to it by managing the mailbox's "control group." The membership of these control groups can be managed using the Group Management web application.

Forwarding addresses

Student organizations that want an "@towson.edu" address should use a forwarding address. The email address (such as studentorgxyz@towson.edu) would forward all incoming email to an external address (such as mail@studentorg.com).

Mailing Lists (lists.towson.edu)

Mailing lists on the TU Email List Service allow email lists that include non-Towson email addresses.

  • These lists can include faculty, staff, students and non-Towson addresses.
  • They're configured to allow the list owners to easily modify the list of subscribers (list members), allow email moderation, archive all messages sent to the list and allow other settings to be customized.
  • All mailing lists on the TU Email List Service are formatted as listname@lists.towson.edu.

SharePoint

SharePoint is another method of communicating within faculty/staff groups and student organizations. Sites allow for shared document libraries, shared announcements and outgoing email alerts to members of the site.

On your SharePoint homepage (http://sp.towson.edu), you can see a list sites you're following. Learn more about SharePoint at TU. 

Conference Rooms and other Shared Resources

Faculty and staff can schedule conference rooms or other shared resources through Outlook. Room resource owners have the ability to configure who can schedule meetings in the room as well as other settings.

Requests

Requests for any of these email options should be submitted to OTS through a TechHelp service request.

All-Campus Emails and Communications

OTS maintains several all-campus email lists, such as an all-students list, an all-faculty list and an all-faculty/staff list. Each of these large lists has a set of approved senders who are authorized to send email, usually from departmental mailboxes in Outlook. Anyone who wishes to send messages to these lists must either already be an approved sender or must submit their message for approval to their respective vice president. Requests to modify the list of approved senders can be sent to OTS by the office of the respective vice president.

The preferred delivery for most all-campus communications is the TU Today daily email newsletter.

Follow these guidelines when sending email to all-campus email lists:

  • Only use attachments when absolutely necessary. Preferably, link to a web page or document on the web instead of including an attachment.
  • Keep the subject line short and informative, accurately describing the intent of the message.
  • Proofread the message for spelling, grammar, punctuation and sentence structure errors.
  • Include contact information like a person's name, phone number or email address, or a website with more details. 
  • Set a Reply-To email address if appropriate, which will cause any replies to be directed to that preferred address.

Sending Email to Student Lists

OTS recommends that faculty and staff use Blackboard for communicating with sets of students, using the discussion boards, chat and email. 

Email distribution lists are available for each class roster (course section), academic major or academic advisor.

  • The class roster and academic major lists are generated automatically based on enrollment in a particular course or registration in a particular major, and are updated nightly.
  • These lists can be used outside of Blackboard.
  • The academic advisor lists are updated nightly, and allow an advisor to contact their advisees.
  • Faculty/staff can send email to these class roster or advising lists using a specific email address for each course section, major or advisor.