The purpose of the following guidelines is to ensure that all university email submissions follow the best practices of "netiquette" and will not over burden the university's network bandwidth or mail server storage capacity.

All university wide email submissions and email communications should comply with the Core Rules of Netiquette. These rules help to establish a code of conduct that will serve to ensure that all university wide email communications adhere to the highest ethical and professional standards. The Core Rules of Netiquette should be reviewed thoroughly before submitting a university wide email submission.

University Wide Email Submission Form

Compliance Statement
This statement appears at the top of the University Wide Email Submission Form. If the "I Disagree" ratio button is selected upon submission of the form the associated university email submission will not be distributed to the campus community.

Sender Information
The sender is identified as the individual that actually submits the request. For non-emergencies, the sender of the university wide email submission assumes full responsibility for the content of the email no matter where the content of the message originates. In the case of emergency emails the responsibility of the message content is born by both the submitter and approver. It is the responsibility of the approver to ensure that there are not guideline compliance issues before authorizing their university ID number to be used for university email distribution purposes.

All fields within the Sender Information section must be filled out completely and truthfully. Inaccuracies within any field may result in a delay or failure to submit a university wide email. It is by no means acceptable to enter in the information for an approver without that approver's consent. This action will make the approver liable for message content that they have not had an opportunity to review. Please be sure that consent is granted every time approval is required.

Message Information
Message Subject - A descriptive subject can be the key to prompting end users to view your message. Be as clear and concise as possible when titling your email to better enable the recipients to ascertain the relevance of your email before opening it.

Intended Recipients - The intended recipients field includes a "faculty" option, "staff" option and a "faculty and staff" option. The faculty option includes all university faculty on both the historic and law campuses. The staff option includes all university staff on both the historic and law campuses. The "faculty and staff" option combines the faculty and staff lists.

Message Status - The message status contains the options "Emergency" and "Non-emergency". It is necessary to get approval from a member of senior staff, the President's Office or the Office of the Provost to initiate an emergency email request. The name and university ID number of the approver must be included in the email submission along with the contact information of the submitter. If the submitter is also the approver, the contact information and the approver information may be the same, but they must both be entered to validate the request. Only emails that are approved by an appropriate approver and marked as emergency will be processed and submitted within 24 hours of the time received. All other email not fitting these criteria will be processed with non-emergency status.

Message Content - Message content must always be included with an email submission regardless of whether an attachment is included or not. As a matter of good practice, email submissions should follow a letter format that includes a greeting (addressing the intended audience), message content, complimentary close and Signature Line. Try to keep emails short and concise, which will help to increase the likelihood of your message being read in it's entirety.

Attachments - Only send attachments if there is no logical way that your information can be communicated in a text only format. It has been shown that people prefer to read messages in the body of the email over opening attachments in another applications. Attachments also increase the time necessary to review emails and tax university server capacity by housing a separate copy of the attached file in the inbox of every intended recipient. Please review the following examples for future reference:

Number of Submissions
Only one university wide email will be distributed per email request submission.