Using Email

Group Email Address

By far the most content creation and interaction in Dgroups revolves around sending email to a single group email address.

Group email address is listed on the group home page, and is usually the same as a group short name: group_name@dgroups.org.

Discussions

To contribute to a discussion via email, respond to the notification email you have received. Please note that your reply will be distributed to all group members.

To start a new discussion via email, send an email message to group email address group_name@dgroups.org.

Email Preferences

To stop receiving email notifications without terminating membership in a group send a message to group email prefixed with nomail.: nomail.group_name@dgroups.org.

To start receiving email again with immediate frequency, send a message to group email address prefixed with mail.: mail.group_name@dgroups.org.

To change email frequency preference to daily, weekly, or monthly digest, use prefixes dailydigest., weeklydigest., or monthlydigest.:

  • dailydigest.group_name@dgroups.org to receive email once a day
  • weeklydigest.group_name@dgroups.org to receive email once a week
  • monthlydigest.group_name@dgroups.org to receive email once a month

To find out active email preferences for all groups one is a member of, send a message to info@dgroups.org.

Leaving a Group

To terminate membership in a group, send an email to leave.group_name@dgroups.org.

Contact Group Administrator

Sometimes one needs to contact group administrators for support. To contact group administrators, send a message to admin.group_name@dgroups.org. The message sent to this address will automatically be forwarded to all group administrators.

This email address is not limited to group members – anyone can send a message to administrators. Sometimes spam gets through spam filters and administrators receive it directly to their inbox, which might cause concern for some group administrators that spam reached all group members: this is never the case, as these messages are never distributed to group members.

Contact Dgroups Support

To contact Dgroups support for whatever technical reason, send a message to support@dgroups.org. This email address accepts messages from everyone, not just from Dgroups users.

Approve or Reject a Contribution

All group administrators receive an Action Required email every time new contribution is posted in a moderated group. To approve the contribution via email in response to this Action Required message, send a message back to approve.group_name+contribution_short_link@dgroups.org. This email address is already composed in the Action Required message under approve by email link.

Similarly, to reject a contribution, send an email to reject.group_name+contribution_short_link@dgroups.org. Again, this address is already composed under reject by email link in the notification message.

Dgroups automatically inserts the yellow header with action links into every Action required message sent to group administrators. If the original email is in HTML format, the action link header will appear as a yellow box above the original content. If the original email was text-only, the action links will not be in the yellow bar; rather, they will also be text-only. When a message is text-only, it depends on the recipient’s email program to underline email links and make them clickable (blue). This is not the case in some email programs (some older versions of Lotus Notes, as well as older versions of Microsoft Outlook). In those cases, you will have to copy the full email address for either approve or reject and paste it into a new email message.

Moderated vs Non-moderated

Email messages sent from group members to a non-moderated group will automatically be approved and published. Messages from non-membes will require administrator approval before publication.

A moderated group requires all email contribution to be reviewed and approved by a group administrator. Even email messages sent by group administrators will require approval.

Requiring approval for administrators' messages is a security measure: sending messages with a forged sender email is extremely easy, and many viruses in the recent years used that tactic to spread themselves through email. If a group is moderated to prevent spreading of any content to its members, it is good hygiene to insure that a message purporting to be from one of group administrators does not pass through unchecked.

The Inbox

The Inbox is a view on the Dgroups incoming email server. Whatever messages the Dgroups email server receives for a specified group, Dgroups will list them in the Inbox list. Depending on how Dgroups interpreted each message, it will be visible under one of the following categories:

Contribution is a message that ends in Discussions tab and is potentially forwarded to others. A contribution might require approval before it is visible to other members. If a message is in this list, it means it is already shown in Discussions tab or is awaiting administrator approval.

Non-member contribution is a message from an email address that does not belong to any of the current group members. By default, all groups accept messages from non-members. To prevent spam, those messages always require approval, regardless whether the group is moderated or not. Messages will appear here only if a box Accept email from unregistered senders is ticked in Settings dialog. NOTE use this setting as a workaround to accept email from group members that send from multiple email accounts.

Command is any email message whose intent is to change the state of a user account or a contribution: subscribe, unsubscribe, mail, nomail, approve, reject. If a message is listed in this list, it means that Dgroups has decided the message is a command and it has already been processed.

Message to admin lists all messages sent to admin.group_name email address. These messages are only distributed to group administrators, and never reach the members, nor are the intended as contributions.

Auto-reply is any message sent by the recipients vacation robot, a bounce from a non-existing recipient, etc. To prevent spamming the group, Dgroups recognizes different automatic replies and blocks them.

Spam is where all the unwanted messages end up. A message ends up here if a spam filter decides that it is spam based on its content (Dgroups does receive a fair amount of spam) or if a message from a non-member is a sent to a group that does not accept email from non-registered senders – clearly in that case the message is unwanted and therefore ends up here. Messages from members are exempt from being classified as spam.

PLEASE NOTE that this list is read-only: one cannot move messages from spam back to contribution or the other way around. The sole purpose of Inbox is to help administrators understand whether someone’s message or command reached Dgroups or not, and to troubleshoot reasons why a contribution did not appear.