Any one-time message addressed to multiple recipients that needs to be sent from a "special" address rather than a user's personal address is considered a mass email. Mass e-mails sent to all faculty, staff and students are reserved for special circumstances and require special permissions based upon organizational hierarchy. Ultimately, these requests will require approval from the Office of the Provost. Please contact AskIT by e-mail at AskIT@uab.edu or by phone at 205-996-5555 to initiate the process. Once the permissions are granted, Central IT will construct the lists and send the e-mail. When submitting your request, please indicate the required send date and allow seven business days for completion of the request. These requests are handled by Infrastructure Services.
Checklist
- Approvals:
- Emails to large numbers must be approved based upon the organizational hierarchy. If the message is addressed to all faculty, staff and students, then a Provost/President level approval is required. Deans can approve for their school, VP for Student Affairs can send to all students, etc.
- Sending to recipient addresses that are not in the phonebook is problematic, and may cause complaints and/or outside mail services to block email from UAB. If this is required, special approval will be needed.
- Date and Time: Date and time to send the message (off hours if possible), at least 7 days before the mailing is to be sent.
- From: A valid From: address must be provided (usually a Resources or other non-personal departmental account); if none is provided, the requestor's address will be used.
- Subject: Requestor must provide a Subject: line for the message.
- Format: The preferred format is text-only; any additional formatting may be lost or altered.
- Links: If the message has clickable links embedded in it, the visible URL must match the "real" URL, or the message will most likely be flagged as a phishing attempt and rejected by some mail systems.
- Recipients: Recipient email addresses (to request a subset of Faculty/Students/Employees, the ticket must be assigned to both TUCC: Bill Laughlin and UNIX Group: Ed Harris)
- BlazerID (preferred)
- BlazerID@uab.edu
- Banner ID #
- Oracle ID #
Request a mass email
Please note:
A report will be sent to the requestor containing the number of emails sent, and the number and addresses not sent with reason. If time permits, this info will be provided before the email is sent.
If a major discrepancy is found, the email will not be sent until the requestor is consulted. If necessary approvals are not submitted within this timeframe, the email will be delayed. A copy of the approval must be attached to the Footprints ticket before sending the email.