There are eight different email "aliases" used for broadcasting a message to staff in an emergency. They are listed on the next page. BEFORE you use any of these aliases, please be sure you understand the following guidelines and instructions:
Guidelines
- The President's Council has approved making several email aliases available for use by all staff under conditions of emergency or to announce issues of major importance and/or urgency only.
- All routine announcements should be distributed via the organization-wide daily newsletter: Staff Notes Daily
- Missing the Staff Notes Daily deadline does not constitute an emergency
This service is intended for important, emergency, or time-critical messages, strictly limited to UCAR/NCAR/UCP business only, that cannot wait until the following workday morning to be seen by all staff. If your message does not fall into one of these categories, do not use the emergency broadcast service. The Daily Announcements service of Staff Notes Daily is sent once each morning to the entire staff via email, and reaches the same list as the "all-ucar" emergency alias. Unlike the emergency broadcast service, Daily Announcements are also displayed and archived on the Web.
- The emergency broadcast service is NOT MODERATED. The postmaster is not responsible for the content of any messages sent to the entire staff and does not attempt to define what is appropriate or to control it in any way other than issuing these voluntary guidelines.
- To prevent spam, the emergency broadcast service is accessible only from inside UCAR or when using authentication to connect to our mail server. External users cannot mail to these aliases.
- The headers of the message do not contain the actual address to send to. This is by design; by keeping the actual address out of the headers, there is no chance of someone accidentally replying to everyone and creating more junk mail.
Instructions
- Do not send messages to the entire staff with attachments or in HTML format, MIME, or anything else beyond simple plain text. People with many different types of mail readers will receive your message. Plain text is the *only* universally-readable format.
- Do not send the same message more than once, under any circumstances. If you didn't get a copy of what you sent, or you suspect some sort of problem, please contact your local system administrator and/or postmaster@ucar.edu to verify that the message did or did not make it out before considering a re-send.
- Please choose the appropriate alias(es) carefully, selecting only the service best targeted to your audience. If you wish to include a few people from a second list, consider cc'ing only those individuals, rather than spamming a second list.
View aliases for emailing all staff (login required)
updated: July 2011
