chip@osh3.OSHA.GOV (Chip Yamasaki) (04/30/91)
We are in the process of setting up a large E-Mail system and the primary users will be very non-technical people on a couple hundred Xenix systems throughout the country. We are going to use UUCP to connect the systems and will use some kind of RFC822 compliant mail system like MMDF II or sendmail for the MTA and something like Elm for the UA. There are several problems we have yet to work out, mostly in the areas of policy. Remember that the users here are mostly very naive in the field of Xenix/Unix and VERY non-technical. We have a need to respond to mail directed at functional areas of responsibility rather than actual users. There are two approaches here. Set up aliases mapping names for the functional areas to users (as is often done with Postmaster), or create actual mailboxes or logins for these areas and have people responsible for checking them. A manager here says that we should set up mailboxes or logins because when people move or take vacation (and I know they do) someone will forget to correct the alias and the mail will go unanswered. I maintain that if the user, who is not very used to mail in the first place, does not get a message on the screen saying that mail is there they will forget to check anyhow. Which approach is better? Any responses on this or other concerns that experienced E-Mail implementers might be able to think of would be very welcome. Also, if anyone has a "how to" reference, either text or interesting book, concerning this type of thing I would appreciate it. I feel comfortable with the Xenix/Unix mail system and whatnot, I just don't know much about what to look out for in the way of E-Mail for the "technically disadvantaged" *. --- PS-Technically Disadvantaged is a term from a Netter. I don't have the name of the person who coined this term or I would give proper attribution. -- -- Charles "Chip" Yamasaki chip@oshcomm.osha.gov
les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell) (05/01/91)
In article <1991Apr30.160250.14572@osh3.OSHA.GOV> chip@osh3.OSHA.GOV (Chip Yamasaki) writes: >We are in the process of setting up a large E-Mail system and the >primary users will be very non-technical people on a couple hundred >Xenix systems throughout the country. >We are going to use UUCP to connect the systems and will use some kind >of RFC822 compliant mail system like MMDF II or sendmail for the MTA and >something like Elm for the UA. Smail3 would also be a good choice for the MTA. Elm is pretty easy to use as mailers go, although I wish it had a way to attach files to messages. I'd recommend that you try to keep the aliasing done mostly at the transport level, though. >We have a need to respond to mail directed at functional areas of >responsibility rather than actual users. There are two approaches here. >Set up aliases mapping names for the functional areas to users (as is >often done with Postmaster), or create actual mailboxes or logins for >these areas and have people responsible for checking them. Yet another choice would be to set up the news software (or notes) with local groups representing the different areas. Whether this would be appropriate would depend on the need for privacy and the amount of overlap between groups. It wouldn't completely eliminate the need for mailing lists but it might reduce the load (at the expense of forcing the users to learn a second interface). The software exists to gateway between news and mailing lists, so you can mix the two according to the preference at the end points. >A manager here says that we should set up mailboxes or logins because >when people move or take vacation (and I know they do) someone will >forget to correct the alias and the mail will go unanswered. > >I maintain that if the user, who is not very used to mail in the first >place, does not get a message on the screen saying that mail is there >they will forget to check anyhow. It's not that difficult to get notification about multiple mailboxes, but I'd say that making the end user do extra work to answer the mail is the wrong approach, unless the volume is so large that keeping it separate is an advantage. If I got 3 messages a day, I wouldn't want to have to read 3 different mailboxes, but for 100 or more I wouldn't mind having them separated by topic. I would start out using aliases/mailing lists to deliver individual copies for all the group names to make the system easier to use in the beginning. If the volume gets out of hand, you can always change how the lists are handled and by then the users will be able to deal with it. Even without the group mailboxes, you should have a cron job that checks for old unread mail and notifies someone. If at all possible, hide the machine names completely from the users. This not only makes the system simpler from the users point of view but it makes the machine management easier as well since you can move the users around and add machines as needed and you only have to update the alias list. For this to work, you either need an automated way to propagate the alias list to all machines when you change it or a set of backbone machines that receive all mail that can't be resolved locally by the others, or both. Les Mikesell les@chinet.chi.il.us