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List Types

When creating an Email List, you have options on which type of list you would like to create. The default is Member list type and will meet most of your needs.

The following List Types are available for your use.

Restricted

  • Anyone on the Member List with receive email, but they cannot send email to the list
  • A separate Authorized Senders list defines who can send to the list
  • Global Senders can also send email to the list

Members

  • This is the default List Type
  • Anyone on the Members List will receive email AND can send email to the list
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Privacy and SPAM

Email Lists has been designed to protect privacy of the individuals and to protect against SPAM.

Privacy

When sending an email message to an Email List, the email addresses of those receiving the message are never displayed. There is also a setting to protect the email address of the individual sending the messages as well - see Return Address Types.

SPAM

SPAM is a huge issue on the Internet today. Email Lists are designed to protect against SPAM by only allow messages through that are authorized. So even if a SPAMMER finds the email address for an Email List and sends SPAM to your Email List - it will not be forwarded on to unit members.

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General Operation

Each Email List is a valid email address that can be used from anywhere on the Internet - the same way your own personal email address is used. The power of this approach comes from the fact that members only need to remember a single address to reach many people. Also, the people on the list may change over time but the email address remains the same.

The following is a sequence of events for how Email Lists are used

  1. A member opens their email client
  2. A new email message is opened
  3. They type the Email List address (i.e. committee@) into the To field of the new message
  4. They complete their message and click the send button
  5. The messages travels over the Internet to our servers
  6. We validate that the email address the message is sent from is authorized to send email to the list
    • If the email address is authorized, the message goes through
    • If the email address is not authorized but is a list member, they receive a non authorized return message
    • If the email address is not authorized and is not a list member, the message is discarded and no return email is sent. This is to protect against SPAM.
  7. Our servers apply the Email List settings to the email message - see Return Address Types
  8. Our servers forward the email message to each email address for List Members of the list
  9. Any undelivered or bounce messages are sent to the List Owner
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Global Senders

This features allows you to select a number of members that can send email to any Email List you create. This will save you the time of manually adding these members to the Authorized Senders list for each individual Email List. It will also make leader changes easy - just change the Global Senders once and all Email Lists will be updated.

Two good example of where this function comes in handy are the following.


    Email Lists are setup for multiple groups with the Member list type. This means that each member of the Group can use the list, but members outside of the list cannot. Primary leaders of the organization are added to the Global Senders list. Now they can send email to any of the GroupEmail Lists.

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Email List Settings

You can control some of the default options for the EMail system by accessing the Email List Settings screen from the Administration/Email menu.

Settings are

  • List Owner Email
      This it the email address of the person who will receive administrative messages from the Email system. Specifically, they will be notified when an email message sent to one of your Email Lists cannot be delivered and the reason why. This person can then determine the best course of action to take.

    • This should be a single valid email address.
    • This should not be an Email Alias or Email List address.
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Recurring Events

You can easily create a series of events with the Recurring Event features.

This feature supports two recurrance patters:

  • Every Week - create the same event for the selected date for every week between the start and end date.
  • Every Month - create the same event each month on each day of the month between the start and end date. You can select which day and week of the month you'd like to schedule the event.

    All events created will have the same title, time, location, and details.

    This function will then create an individual calender item for each event in the series.

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Date Selection Utility

When creating events you need to select dates that the event starts and stops on. To facility easy selection of dates, a popup Date Selection Utility is provided using the icon .

Note: The use of this utility requires that your browser have Javascript enabled. If you are not seeing the image below when clicking on the icon your browser is blocking it.

This new utility replaces the previous popup utility which required a new window to be opened and the new utility provides a number of additional features.

This utility is compatible with Internet Explorer, Netscape, Mozilla, and Safari web browsers.

  1. Close the Date Selection popup
  2. Single Click - go back 1 year
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Default Calendar View

You can define which Calendar View displays when members click on the Calendar menu item under the Main Menu on the top left of all pages.

  • Month View - display a standard calendar month
  • List View - display a table of upcoming events in event order

For the List View you can also define the default number of months to show.

You can set the Calendar defaults using Administration/Control Panel/Features.

Importing Members

There are multiple ways in which you can add members and roster information you to your website.

  • Manual - You can add members manually through the Add Member function under Administration/Members/Unit Members. For this method you will have to add a member for each youth, parent, and then associate children and their parents manually.




  • Roster Import - This SOAR specific format can be used to fully load both members and roster information including child/parent association and group association.
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Roster Check

The Roster Check feature will run a number of tests against the existing Member/Roster information to provide you feedback on any potential missing areas of your Roster.

This is a very useful feature to run after you believe you have imported/entered all your members and made parent, youth, leader, and Group associations.