Guidelines for E-mail Generated from Web Pages

Alias

Set up an e-mail alias for the group; the alias should be used on the Web pages for comments and questions.

Send to aliases@unc.edu a message giving the e-mail address for the group (for example, culinary@unc.edu) and the full e-mail address of the person to receive mail for the group. The e-mail address of the person does not have to be on the email machine; the e-mail address of the person can itself be an alias. Aliases are not limited to eight characters. For example, culinary_arts@unc.edu could be used instead of culinary@unc.edu.

For example:

Please make culinary_arts@unc.edu an alias for judy_hallman@unc.edu.

`mailto:` tag

Use the mailto: tag to provide a clickable mailer, specifying the e-mail address for yourself or your group, as in the following example, which sends mail to culinary@unc.edu:

     E-mail your comments to: 
     <a href="mailto:culinary@unc.edu"><tt>culinary@unc.edu</tt></a>

E-mail should be directed to the person responsible for the content of the page, not the designer.

The e-mail address

Do not use the id webmaster. Groups, such as departments and organizations, should use the group id that is used to maintain the pages; for example, culinary@unc.edu.

Changing the e-mail address for the alias

When you go on vacation, be sure to change the e-mail address of the alias to the person who will handle this task while you are gone. Send a message to aliases@unc.edu requesting the change.

Expertise list

Maintain a list of people who should receive questions on specific topics.

Respond to e-mail

Check e-mail at least once a day. Forward messages as appropriate to people on the expertise list. Reply to the rest. Be polite. Thank people for their messages; recipients appreciate personal attention and your time.

Follow up

Define procedures for following up to make sure that questions you forward are answered. For example, keep questions active until you know they have been answered, and ask your experts to copy you on their answers.

Log messages

Be sure to keep a log file of e-mail messages. At the beginning of the month, rename the log file to include the month in the name (for example, log.96apr), starting a new log. Periodically remove the old files.