|
Participating through Email
Sometimes it is just not convenient to come to the WebBoard site. Yet, you want to be in on the discussion. With WebBoard 3.0's mailing list support, you can keep in touch by email. WebBoard sends you all messages posted to the conferences you choose and then posts your email responses (either new topic or reply messages). You might think of email participation in WebBoard much like being in a conference call. You can take part in the discussion without being in the room (although you might miss some diagrams being drawn on the whiteboard or the cinnamon buns a colleague brought to make the meeting more enjoyable!).
The benefits of email participation are numerous. Here are just a few:
- You don't have to remember to visit the WebBoard site. Busy people often find it hard to check WebBoard for new messages. By receiving all messages in email, you don't have to worry. You automatically know what is happening.
- You can save on connect time. If you are working remotely from a home office or while traveling, you can pick up WebBoard messages when you pick up your other email. You can craft your replies offline and have them posted when you send your email.
- You can immediately know when messages are posted to important conferences. Since mailing lists are on a per conference basis, you can subscribe to the conference mailing lists that most affect you. Then you receive messages as they are posted and don't have to constantly check the board for new ones. You may still decide to go to the board to read and reply but you know there is something waiting for you.
- You can easily keep a record of a discussion. Receiving all conference postings in email lets you save them for future reference on your local system. For example, if a conference deals with your area of responsibility on a project, you can keep copies of all the messages posted to the conference as email messages.
That's a start on the list. You can think of more. This section tells you how to set up your WebBoard account to receive mailing lists and then how to post messages to conferences via email. And, yes, it also tells you what you will miss by participating through email.
If you are participating on a board that does not require authentication (that is, you did not have to give a username and password to log in), the mailing list feature is unavailable.
Setting up Mailing List Support
Before you can participate in WebBoard through email, you have to complete a few setup items. You must first select a format for receiving email from WebBoard and then you must subscribe to specific conference mailing lists. This section gives instructions for these tasks.
Selecting a mailing list format
You can receive WebBoard messages by email in one of three formats:
Non-digest
This format sends individual messages as they are posted. This format is best if you want to participate in conferences on a real-time basis by responding .
Digest
This format saves up all the messages from a conference for a day and sends them in a single email. The digest email starts with an index list of all messages in the email so you can get a quick overview of what happened. This format is best if you want to primarily read the discussion and only respond occasionally.
Digest/ZIPped
This format creates a digest and then compresses it into a standard zip file, which is sent once a day as a file attachment. You must be using a mail program that handles attachments and have an unzip program (such as WinZip) to open the file. This format is useful if the conferences have high volume and you want to get the messages as compact as possible. This format is also useful if you simply want to archive conference postings.
The format you select for the mailing list format is set in your user profile and is applied across all conferences. If you want or need a different format for different conferences, you should set up multiple accounts (see the section on this topic later in online help).
To verify or change your mailing list format, you must edit your user profile. To do so, follow these steps:
- Select More from the WebBorad menubar. The More Options menu appears.
- Click Edit Your Profile from the menu. The User Profile page appears.
- Scroll to the end of this page and select your preferred mailing list format by clicking the radio button next to it.
- Click Save to update your profile. WebBoard responds with an Edits Saved message.
Subscribing to conference mailing lists
Choosing a mailing list format is only the first step. Next you must decide which conferences you want to receive by email and then subscribe to their mailing lists. Note that not all conferences may have mailing lists; setting up mailing lists is the responsibility of the WebBoard administrator, board manager, or conference moderator. If a conference does not have a mailing list and you would like to receive email for that conference, contact the WebBoard administrator.
To subscribe to one or more conference mailing lists, follow these steps:
- Select More from the WebBorad menubar. The More Options menu appears.
- Click Mailing Lists from the menu. The Mailing Lists page appears.
- Check the box following the conference name to subscribe to its mailing list. Repeat for each conference you wish to subscribe to. The name of the mailing list is in parentheses following the Conference name.
- To unsubscribe to a mailing list, uncheck the box.
- Click Save to complete the subscription process. WebBoard responds with an Edits Saved message. You will now start receiving the email for the conferences you selected.
To receive email from WebBoard, the email address you put in your WebBoard user profile must exactly match the Reply-To email address used by your email program. If these addresses don't match, WebBoard will not let you post messages via email. The Reply-To address is sometimes called the Return Address.
|