What collaboration and email sharing tools does Wayne State offer?

Wayne State University C&IT offers a number of collaboration and email sharing tools compatible with Wayne Connect. Depending on your needs, you may be interested in one or more of these tools. These tools can be used concurrently.

• LISTSERV
• Contact list
• Room/resource calendars
• Group IDs

LISTSERV

A LISTSERV list allows easy collaboration between a group of people via email. List members do not need to have Wayne Connect email accounts. Lists can be customized so that all emails to the list are sent to all list members, only certain members can see emails sent to the list, and/or only certain users can send to all list members. Membership can be open or moderated. A LISTSERV list is the easiest way to have a discussion among a large group of people so all participants can easily respond to all other participants.

The Wayne State tech support list, techsup@lists.wayne.edu, allows any user to send an email to that address and the message is automatically distributed to all users. Replies to that email are also automatically distributed to all users.

Contact List

A Wayne Connect distribution/contact list allows a user to easily send emails to a group of people. A user creates a list within his/her Contacts (address book) and can then enter that list name into the To: field when composing a new email. Wayne Connect sends the email to all the people in the list. This is just a shortcut to use if you regularly send an email to a preset list of people.

For example, you create a list with John and Jane called "My First List". When you send an email to "My First List," John and Jane will both receive that email. They will see the email as being addressed to John and Jane, not "My First List."

Room/Resource Calendars

If the only thing you need to do is keep a calendar for a conference room or another shared resource, you can have a room/resource calendar. This calendar can be viewable by a large group of people and automatically accept appointments. Users will add this calendar as the location when scheduling a meeting. This calendar is visible to anybody assigned access, so you can choose when to schedule a meeting based on when a room is free. These calendars can be used for any shared resource.

A calendar for Conference Room 1 might be assigned to all employees in AAB. Anybody can schedule a meeting for this room, which automatically books it for that time slot. You can also view that calendar to see what is scheduled for that room.

Group ID

Group IDs allow users to setup a mailbox with a generic name, such as helpdesk@wayne.edu, to which anybody can send email. Email can also be sent from a group ID. Group IDs can also log in to Wayne State systems other than email or perform specific technical tasks with a full Wayne State account. These accounts have a password and can have access to Wayne State systems as assigned. A group ID account requires special approval and is monitored closely for security breaches.

Comparison

The table below shows the features you may be looking for and which features are possible with each kind of collaboration tool.