Student email addresses
All students are provided with a Royal Holloway address and mailbox. Official communications from the College to the student will use this mailbox and departments may require course-work submitted electronically to come from this address. Students may forward mail from the College address to a personal mailbox of their choice and personal mailboxes will be accessible from College systems where technically possible.
Responding promptly and the ‘Out of Office’ facility
People generally anticipate a rapid response when sending email, although this expectation may be unreasonable. To manage this expectation you should indicate when an email enquiry will receive attention or use the out-of-office facility:
- Aim to respond to email within a working day either by dealing with the enquiry or by sending an acknowledgement
- Set an ‘out-of-office’ message for absences of more than one day. The message should make clear how the correspondent might proceed with an urgent query in your absence
- Nominate a colleague to read and respond to messages for staff who are away for long periods
Function-led email addresses
The anonymity of function-led email addresses (eg any-enquiries@rhul.ac.uk) means that a prompt response mechanism is even more important than a personal mailbox – senders have identified the address as a main point of contact, and the expectation of a rapid response or helpful acknowledgement is greater.
Incoming junk/spam mail
The College is making active efforts to control spam mail. Incoming mail passes through a spam trap which marks likely spam with a numerical score and a special addition to the subject heading. Mail recipients can then use mail filters to delete or move the messages away from the Inbox. In due course we intend to refuse to accept messages with a high spam score.
Auto signatures
Many staff adopt an AutoSignature to automatically add contact details to mail messages. Keep these short and to the point, and don’t exceed five lines – include your name, job title and/or department, phone number, email address and the College web address. Eg:
Jo Bloggs
Departmental Administrator, Any Old Department
Royal Holloway, University of London
Tel : 01784 XXXXXX
Fax : 01784 XXXXXX
Email : j.bloggs@rhul.ac.uk
www.rhul.ac.uk
Email circulation
Before circulating information (mailing an identifiable group rather than a few individuals) please think carefully about the most effective channel of communication: Many staff are sensitive to receiving what they consider to be spam email. Some guidelines follow for different categories of people.
Please restrict your use of College mailing lists to material which is of essential College relevance. Please don’t repeat messages (and certainly don’t send around a second message which is just an apology for a mistake in the first) and don’t send objections about messages to the whole list. Please report** it to an administrator rather than starting an email storm of complaints and counter-complaints.
In general attachments should not be circulated round mailing lists – please seek advice** about placing formatted information on the web/intranet and emailing a link to it rather than clogging mailboxes.
General information of interest to a majority of staff
Use the Campus Intranet – send your information to Intranet@rhul.ac.uk, and it will be placed on the online message board within 24 hours.
The Intranet Message Board is restricted to campus access only and displays messages of interest to staff on a rolling basis in the order that they are submitted. The service is backed up by a weekly digest email to all staff, listing all messages posted online in the previous week. This is compiled and sent out by the Intranet Team on a Monday each week.
If you have very urgent or highly important information to share ask Intranet to mail your message to all staff. Intranet will send an email to all staff on your behalf, but only in exceptional circumstances.
Bulletin Box - announcements of interest to all staff
Bulletin Box is exclusively used by the Principal to address all staff with the most urgent or important news and announcements. Bulletin Box messages are sent to all staff and circulation may also include all students.
Targeted information to reach a minority of staff
There are numerous email distribution lists to propagate information to individual offices or groups. These can be found in the Outlook Global Address List but you will find helpful information available from the Campus Classified page on the Intranet. No more than 4 lists should be aggregated in any one mailing.
Main circulation lists
a) RH Dept Heads (includes The Head of each Academic department)
b) RH Dept Contacts (includes a single point of contact in each Academic department, typically Department Administrators/Secretaries).
c) RH Admin Heads (a single point of contact in each Academic Service or Administration department)
d) RH Admin Contacts (a single point of contact in each Academic Service or Administration department, typically Department Administrators/Secretaries).
e) All Staff (incl. all staff); RHUL staff (incl. all staff other than Central Administration); Administration (incl. those staff who are not on RHUL staff) - there is very limited access to these lists – Intranet is the main sender.
General information of interest to a majority of students
a) Use the Campus Noticeboard facility – post your messages and they will appear on the board within one working day.
b) All Students email distribution list: there is very limited access to this list – Intranet is the main sender and will send messages to all students in exceptional circumstances or for established routine communications of interest to the majority of students.
**Reporting - if in doubt - please seek advice from the Intranet Team (based in the Communications and External Relations Office.)