Procedure for Mass Electronic Mailing
This procedure describes the necessary steps to send a mass electronic mailing
as specified in the
Mass Electronic Mailings Policy.
Electronic Mailings for Advancement Activities
must use
the Development and Public Affairs Procedures for Electronic Mailings
for Advancement Activities.
The University of Virginia Health System and
the University of Virginia College
at Wise have
separate policies and procedures.
Certain mailings must be approved. To send a Mass Electronic Mailing:
- Decide the target population and message content. At present,
we can send a message to:
- all students who have registered electronic mail addresses
and/or
- all faculty and/or staff who have registered electronic mail addresses (includes Health System employees, some people in the School of Continuing and Professional Studies - all Centers - and some people at the University of Virginia College at Wise)
or
- a list obtained by the sender from University data sources
- Contact the appropriate University official to obtain approval to send your message. This person will
need to know the target population and the message content.
- After the approval has been granted, the sender must
use the Mass Electronic Mailings
Distribution Request Form to request the distribution of the message.
Establishing the process that distributes the message and distributing
it can take some time. While we will attempt to meet your delivery schedule,
please be aware that a message that is deemed more urgent or a problem
with system hardware can delay the delivery of your message to its target
population. We will try to distribute any message received within 24 business
hours of its receipt. For example, to insure that a message is received
by its target population by Monday a.m., in most instances we would need
to receive it by close of business Thursday. Also know that to obtain the
email addresses for a specific target population, you will need to allow
your source of addresses sufficient time to generate and provide the email
addresses of your intended recipients.
Delivery of messages that the sender believes require handling
faster than the normal delivery process must
receive from an appropriate Vice President or designee a designation for
same day delivery - where the information to distribute the
message (including its text and any needed email addresses)
is provided no later than 3 p.m. on the same day the message needs
distributing - or emergency delivery - those rare and truly urgent
deliveries that for safety or
security purposes must begin as quickly as possible and proceed as
rapidly as possible or that must happen after business hours or
on a weekend. Same day delivery or emergency delivery
requests should be accompanied by a telephone call to the ITC
Computing Help Desk (434.924.3731) with a verbal request to
alert the email postmaster to the special handling mass electronic
mailing request.
Upon receipt of all needed information, Postmaster will direct
the request for the mass electronic mailing to the appropriate individuals
within ITC who will oversee the distribution of the message.
Delivery Limits
To ensure normal performance of the University's email delivery system,
we have implemented a throttle
on messages through any non-dedicated email server so that for a given computer
(connected to a specific IP address at U.Va.), sending of email
messages is limited to 1,000 messages in any 60-minute period.
Properly configured e-mail clients will process the error message from
the server when a message distribution exceeds the 1,000 addressee limit,
thereby notifying the sender of the need to distribute the message to
the remaining addressess after a 1-hour delay.
Those needing to send more than 1,000 messages in
an hour from their computer will need to contact postmaster@Virginia.edu
to schedule their send, providing to postmaster@Virginia.edu:
- their sending
IP address
- approximate number of messages (addressees)
- date and time of the send
While we will try to be responsive to emergency needs, 24-hour
notice will facilitate our being able to schedule your
send.
After your IP address has approval and before you send the messages, you
will need to change your outgoing mail server (SMTP server)
to: maildrip.itc.virginia.edu.
If you are not using a mail merge program, you will want
to send your message to yourself and then put the recipient
email addresses into a Bcc: field. Note that most email
programs have limits on how many ids can appear in a To:,
Cc: and Bcc: field. If you do not have a mail merge program,
we recommend you contact the UVa email postmaster using the
address postmaster@virginia.edu for information on creating
a Mailman mailing list for your purpose, even if it will be
used only one time.
Mailman Mailing List Guidance
When a Mailman mailing list has more than 1,000 members, all messages to
the list must be moderated (held for review before distribution to the list members)
and must be distributed outside the hours 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (inclusive) Eastern Time Monday - Friday. The sending of these messages also needs coordinated with postmaster@Virginia.edu prior to the distribution of
the message to the list members.
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