-
Introduction
-
Scope
-
Policies for the Mass
Mailing Service of ITSC
-
Guidelines and Procedures for Submitting a Mass Mailing request
-
Definitions
-
Resources / Related Topics
I.
Introduction
University departments/units/socities may need to generate electronic mass
mailings of officially-required notification
information, announcement and promotion of
events or activities, etc. through e-mail.
Such mass mailings may be accomplished either
by generating temporary, up-to-date, electronic
mailing lists or by other means of collecting
e-mail addresses to reach the target audience.
However, if not sent correctly, mass mailings
have the potential to disrupt e-mail service
for tens of thousands of campus e-mail system
users.
The ITSC provides mass mailing service with
the objective to help university departments/units/socities to dispatch mass mailings in an orderly
way. The service has maintained
some standing "all" electronic mailing lists
including "all students", "all staff", "all
postgraduate students" and "all undergraduate
students" lists. University departments/units/socities
can make a request to the ITSC to send e-mails to these groups.
The mass mailing service of ITSC also helps university
departments/units/socities dispatching mass mailings
to smaller groups of staff or students if the
departments/units/socities can provide the staff and
students lists of these groups.
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II.
Scope
The policies in section III below govern the mass
mailings of ITSC. They are created to protect CWEM
e-mail users from unauthorized mass mailings,
and to protect the campus network and the Campus-wide
E-mail System (CWEM) from an overload of e-mail
activity.
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III.
Policies
- Mass mailings can only be used for activities
which comply with the University regulations
and policies, the Acceptable
Use Policy of ITSC, and all existing laws including
not only those that are specific to computers
and networks, but also those that may apply
generally to personal conduct.
- Mass
mailings should not be used to advertise or
solicit commercial activities or services.
- Mass
mailings should not be used to "spam" recipients.
- Mass mailings that are not of officially-required
notification information, or announcements
and promotions of events or activities
conducted by departments, units or socities will
not be sent.
- The requesting department must
have considered the existing channels of
communication including the CUHK portal,
i.e. the MyCUHK, newsgroup, the web, mailing
list service, i.e. the Mailing List, which
are more 'recipient-friendly' before consider
requesting the sending of mass mailing.
- Only
authorized persons representing departments/units/socities may request the sending of mass mailings
by ITSC.
- No individual may request the sending
of mass mailings by ITSC.
- Mass mailings
shall be dispatched by ITSC.
- A request to
send a mass mailing to a wrong group will
be rejected.
- A request to send a mass mailing that
was sent before will be rejected.
- Same information will not be dispatched more than two times.
- Mass mailing
is a process that imposes significant load
on the Campus-wide E-mail System as well
as the campus network. To ensure
smooth running of the e-mail service for
the whole university, ITSC has the right,
in case the normal service is being jeopardized,
to circumvent the process including early
abortion without consulting
the concerned department/unit/society.
- ITSC will not
provide the list of e-mail addresses for the
requestor's retention.
- If a mass mailing request is authorized the process of handling
a mass mailing request includes vetting
and dispatching it. ITSC requires 7
working days to process a mass mailing
request.
- Mass mailings to the aforesaid "all"
groups will be consolidated and dispatched
in form of a digest. Different kinds of
mass mailings might be grouped into different
digests.
- It is ITSC's decision as when the
digests of mass mailings will be dispatched.
Normally, mass mailing digests will be sent on the last working day of a week.
- In
case mass mailings are not for any one
of the aforesaid "all" groups, it
is the department's responsibility to provide
the IDs, i.e. staff/student IDs, of the
recipients. Mass mailings of this kind
will be sent on its own and on a date to
be mutually agreed by the requesting department
and the ITSC.
- Mass mailings will be sent to e-mail address, which is in the form of xxx@cuhk.edu.hk of their recipients.
- ITSC DOES NOT and no
way can guarantee the staff/students
will read the message delivered to
their mailboxes.
- Some staff or students may type in an invalid e-mail address. The result is, the message cannot be delivered and will be bounced back to the sender. Therefore, the department/unit should prepare to receive these bounced back e-mails.
- The
following disclaimer will be added
to mass mailings to distinguish them
from other e-mails or mass mailings:
"This e-mail is sent by ITSC
to recipients on the request of our Department/Unit/Society. If you have any queries or comments regarding
the policies and guidelines for mass
mailings by ITSC please check at http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/itsc/about/mass-mailing.html or submit them to ITSC Electronic HelpDesk
at https://helpdesk.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/group/policy-help.
For comments and enquiries related
to this message, please send to Department/Unit/Society
e-mail contact. ------ Department/Unit/Society
recipients, Department/Unit/Society
e-mail contact and Department/Unit/Society :
to be supplied by requesting department/unit/society
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IV.
Procedures and Guidelines for Submitting Mass
Mailing requests
- The
authorized person of the department/unit/society
must submit the request to ITSC at https://helpdesk.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/group/cumassmailing
with the following information :
Purpose :
Target Recipients :
Sender's Name
:
Requesting Department/Unit/Society (In English
: Mandatory)
Sender's Contact Tel. No. :
Message E-mail Address (To be appeared in the "From" field of your message):
Message Subject (In English : Mandatory)
:
Message Content (In Chinese AND English
is preferred) :
Disclaimer :
Request
will be rejected should any of the above
is missing.
- No
information should be submitted as attachment.
- The
size of the message should be less than
5K.
-
Chinese characters must be in Big5 codes and plain text format.
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V.
Definitions
Authorized
person
An individual officially acts on behalf of a
department or unit.
Mass
mailing
E-mail transmitted to a large number of addressees
and having significant potential to negatively
impact network or mail system performance. (Although
an exact lower limit cannot be specifically quantified,
most cases of campus mailings to 1,000 or more
users should be considered "mass
mailings". )
Officially-required
notification information
Dissemination required by law, policy, health
and safety, or other very compelling reasons.
Spam
To exploit broadcast systems for purposes beyond
their intended scope to amplify the widespread
distribution of unsolicited e-mail.
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VI.
Resources / Related Topics
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Version 2.2.1
Nov 2008 |