Listserv Mailing List Owner Quick Start Guide

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Centre for IT Services Page 1

Listserv Mailing List Owner Quick Start Guide

1. Sending Mass Mail to Subscribers

Authorised sender can send mass mail to all subscribers in the mailing list by following these steps:

a. Compose your email content in Outlook (in HTML or Plain Text format – do not use Rich Text format)

b. Do take note of the followings:

• The maximum size for each email is 512KB. This is a policy set by NTU Postmaster and must not be changed without permission.

Therefore you should optimise the size of any image in your email, and do not attach any huge file (use hyperlink to the file stored on a web or file-share server instead).

• Please include information on how to unsubscribe at the end of your email. E.g. “To unsubscribe from this mailing list, please click here or email [email protected]”.

c. Enter your mailing list address (e.g. [email protected]) in the [To…] field and click [Send] button (do not use Forward or Reply)

d. Depending on the setting of your mailing list, your email may be routed to an Editor/Moderator for approval, or a “confirmation required” email may be sent to you that looks like this:

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Centre for IT Services Page 2 If you receive the above “confirmation required” email, open the attachment (which contains the email you ‘sent’ in the previous step) and check that its content is correct. Please check the content of the email attachment very carefully before clicking on the hyperlink to approve the mass mailing to all your subscribers as sent email cannot be recalled. If you need to amend the email content, simply ignore and delete this “confirmation required” email and repeat the above steps to compose another email to rectify any content or format error.

e. If you (or your Editor/Moderator depending on your mailing list setting) click on the hyperlink to approve the email, your email will be queued on the server and mailed to your subscribers. Please note that if you have a huge number of subscribers, the mass mailing job will take some time to complete.

Depending on the setting of your mailing list, a short acknowledgment email with statistical information on the mass mailing may be sent to you, like below:

Your message dated Tue, 17 Jun 2014 15:24:13 +0800 with subject

"Listserv Scheduled Maintenance" has been successfully distributed to the NANYANGCONNECT list (481 recipients).

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2. Managing Subscribers (for List Owner Only)

2.1 Login to Listserv Web Interface

Access http://mlist.ntu.edu.sg/scripts/wa.exe.

If you have not previously logged in and saved your password as cookie on your computer, you will see a Login screen below:

Enter your list owner’s NTU email address in full (e.g. List- [email protected]) and the Listserv password (note: this is different from your email account password). Click on [Log In] button.

If you are using this web interface for the first time, or if you have forgotten the password:

Click on the hyperlink “get a new Listserv password” in the Login screen.

The following “Register LISTSERV Password” screen opens:

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Centre for IT Services Page 4 Enter your list owner’s NTU email address in full (e.g. List- [email protected]) and a password. Confirm the password by entering it again.

Important: The password must be at least 6 characters. It can be any alpha numeric combination (A-Z, 0-9, and any case), and certain special characters, including $, #, @, _, -, ?, !, |, and %.

Then click the [Register Password] button. When your password registration is accepted, a confirmation email will be sent to the email address you entered above. You will have to activate your password by responding to the confirmation email (or clicking the link the email contains).

After successful log in, you should be able to see a Tool Bar similar to the below:

2.2 Batch Addition/Deletion of Subscribers

Click List Management on the Tool Bar and then select Subscriber Management.

The “Subscriber Management” screen opens. Select the correct mailing list.

Click on the Bulk Operations tab.

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Centre for IT Services Page 5 The Bulk Operations tab allows a list owner to upload an Input File containing email addresses and (optionally) names to the mailing list. The Input File is created on your own PC with an ASCII text editor. It must be a plain text file (not a word processor document or spreadsheet) and must contain one email address per line, optionally followed with a space (or TAB) and the subscriber's name.

By selecting the appropriate radio button option, you can either add all the email addresses in the file to the list (optionally replacing the current subscribers) or remove them from the list. After clicking the [Import] button you will see a command response similar to the following:

• If the Add the imported address to “List”; do not remove any subscribers option is selected:

ADD: no error, 202 recipients added, no entry changed, no duplicate, none forwarded.

• If the Remove all subscribers from “List”, and add the imported address option is selected:

DELETE: 14 subscribers removed.

ADD: no error, 38 recipients added, no entry changed, no duplicate, none forwarded.

(If this option is selected, but no input file is specified, then you will only get the DELETE message.)

• If the Remove the imported addresses from “List”; do not add any subscribers option is selected:

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• If the Remove the imported addresses from all lists option is selected:

Global deletion process complete, 352 entries removed.

• If you do not supply an upload file where required, or if your browser does not support the RFC1867 file upload extension, you get the following message:

Your browser did not upload any file during the transfer. Assuming you did fill in the file input box, the most likely cause is that your browser does not support the file upload extension (RFC1867).

Notes: Bulk operations are not enabled by default. The site manager must enable this functionality explicitly.

• If you get an error 2 when you click on the [Import] button, this means that the "upload" directory has not been created.

• If you get an error 13 when you click on the [Import] button, this means that the "upload" directory has been created but the program user does not have write permission in that directory.

• The subscribers being added or deleted will not be notified.

2.3 Manage Individual Subscriber

Click List Management on the Tool Bar and then select Subscriber Management.

The “Subscriber Management” screen opens. Select the correct mailing list.

Click on the Single Subscriber tab.

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Centre for IT Services Page 7 The Single Subscriber tab allows the list owner to examine or delete a subscription, as well as to add a new subscriber to the list.

List owner can also view the list of subscribers either (1) in the browser or (2) receive via email, by clicking on the appropriate hyperlink as shown above.

For more details on managing subscribers, please refer to this site:

http://www.lsoft.com/manuals/16.0/htmlhelp/list%20owners/ListandSubscriberMa nagement.html.

For further enquiry or assistance on using Listserv mailing list, please contact [email protected].