Last updated January 13, 2011 20:40, by leawang

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About Mailing Lists

Mailing lists are one way for project members to communicate. (See About Forums for another way.) Project members can sign up for mailing lists by subscribing to them. By default, anyone with a login on Project Kenai can subscribe to any project's mailing lists.

A project can have two mailing lists created for it—when a source control management repository is added, and when an issue tracker is added to the project. Both mailing lists go to the project name at java.net. The two mailing lists are:

Commits—Receives email automatically when a project member commits a change to the project repository.
Issues—Receives email automatically when a new issue (bug or feature change request) is added to the bug tracking system.

A project administrator can add mailing lists as needed (see Managing a Project: Mailing Lists).

Using Mailing Lists

When you open a project's Project page, you see its mailing lists under Mailing Lists in the left navbar. Clicking a mailing list name in the left navbar shows the archive for that mailing list. You can also see Mailing Lists on the right in the list of project Features. Clicking Mailing Lists in either location opens the list of mailing lists.

Click Mailing List to see the list of mailing lists, where you can subscribe to or unsubscribe from lists, browse archives, and search for emails. What you see on this page depends on your role in the project. The following page is what you see if you aren't subscribed to any mailing lists for the project:

Subscribing to or Unsubscribing From a List

To subscribe to or unsubscribe from a list, you can either use your web browser or you can send email.

Note: If you are not a member of Project Kenai or of the project whose list you want to subscribe to, you can subscribe only by sending email, since you won't see the Subscribe button on the project's mailing lists. After you send the subscribe email, your subscription request has to be approved by a project administrator. See Using Email to Subscribe or Unsubscribe.

Using Your Web Browser to Subscribe or Unsubscribe

To subscribe (be added to a mailing list and receive emails from it):

Display the list of mailing lists for the project (see sample list above).
Find the mailing list you're interested in.
Chose your delivery type—mail to receive all emails as they're sent or digest for periodic collections of emails.
Click Subscribe.
If your subscription is successful, you'll see the Subscribe button change to Unsubscribe and a message that you've subscribed to this list, as shown below.

To unsubscribe from a mailing list:

Display the list of mailing lists for the project as described above.
If you're subscribed to a list, you'll see an Unsubscribe button. Clicking it will remove you from the list.

Using Email to Subscribe or Unsubscribe

You can subscribe to an email list and unsubscribe from it by sending an email to the Sympa email system on java.net. You don't have to be member of the project or even signed up with Project Kenai to do this. A subscribe email will be handled by the project's email administrator. An unsubscribe email is handled automatically. In either case, you will be notified by email of the result.

To subscribe by email to a project's email list:

Determine the project email address and the name of the email list. For example, you want to subscribe to the email list commits@coolphpcollabtool.java.net. The name of the list is commits and the address portion is @coolphpcollabtool.java.net.
Address your email to sympa@coolphpcollabtool.java.net.
For the subject line, use subscribe commits and send the email. You don't need any message content, just the subject line.
You will receive an automated email from Sympa telling you to verify that you want to subscribe. The email will say something like this:
You asked for your e-mail address to be added to list 'commits'. If you want this action to be taken, please - reply to this mail OR - send a message to sympa@coolphpcollabtool.java.net with subject auth 101101101 subscribe commits OR - hit the following mailto mailto:sympa@coolphpcollabtool.java.net?subject=auth%101101101a%20subscribe%20commits%20 If you do not want this action to be taken, you can safely ignore this message
Use one of the three methods to send an email to the Sympa system confirming that you want to join the list. For example, you could reply to the email and click Send in your email program to send it.
You then will receive a reply email from the Sympa system telling you that your command has been received and has been forwarded to a list administrator for approval. The email will say something like this:
Command has been performed : > subscribe commits Your request to subscribe/unsubscribe has been forwarded to the list's owners for approval. You will receive a notification when you have been subscribed (or unsubscribed) to the list.
When you are approved by the list administrator, you will receive an email to that effect. For example,
Welcome to list commits@coolphpcollabtool.java.net Your subscription email is ell@flll.org Commits Mailing List

Troubleshooting Tips: Your email program might filter the Sympa messages as spam. If that's a possibility, add the Sympa address to your contact list or no-spam list as required by your email software. If you don't see the Sympa message after an hour or so, check your spam folder, find the message, and mark it Not Spam.
The same goes for the final approval email. It typically comes from listname-request@project-name.java.net .
In the example used above, that would be commits-request@coolphpcollabtool.java.net .

To unsubscribe by email from a project's email list:

Unsubscribing is similar to subscribing (described above), except that you use the subject line unsubscribe listname in your initial email. Here are the detailed instructions.

Determine the project email address and the name of the email list. For example, you want to unsubscribe from the email list commits@coolphpcollabtool.java.net. The name of the list is commits and the address portion is @coolphpcollabtool.java.net.
Address your email to sympa@coolphpcollabtool.java.net.
Add the subject line unsubscribe commits and send the email. You don't need any message content, just the subject line.
You will receive an automated email from Sympa telling you to verify that you want to unsubscribe. It will say something like this:
You asked for your e-mail address to be removed from list 'commits'. If you want this action to be taken, please - reply to this mail OR - send a message to sympa@coolphpcollabtool.java.net with subject auth 101101101 signoff commits ell@fll.org OR - hit the following mailto mailto:sympa@coolphpcollabtool.java.net?subject=auth%101101101%20signoff%20commits%20ell%40flll.org If you do not want this action to be taken, you can safely ignore this message.
Use one of the three methods to send an email to the Sympa system confirming that you want to leave the list. For example, you could reply to the email and click Send in your email program to send it.
You then will receive a reply email from the Sympa system telling you that you have been removed from the email list. The email will say something like this:
Your email address (ell@flll.org) has been removed from list commits@coolphpcollabtool.java.net bye!

If you have any problems with receiving the Sympa emails, see Troubleshooting Tips above.

Sending Email to a List

If you're subscribed to a list and you have a role that permits sending emails, you can send email to the list. Display the list of mailing lists (see Using Mailing Lists above) and click Compose Message, as shown below.

If you see Compose Message under the Unsubscribe button, you can also send email to the list from your own email client. You can copy the email address from the list of mailing lists.

Browsing and Searching Email Lists

To browse or search an email list, open the project page and click the email list name in the left navbar.

Another way to get there is to first display the list of mailing lists (see Using Mailing Lists above), then click Browse Archives to the right of the list name. Note: If you have just subscribed to an email list, you might have to refresh the page before you can see Browse Archives.

The email list's browse page opens:

Browsing an Email List

Near the top of an email list's browse page, there is a droplist showing the year and a list of boxes for each month (see the figure above). Each box shows the number of emails sent that month. By default, the current month's emails are shown in the list. You can click any box that has emails to see the list of emails for that month. To change the year, click the droplist and choose a different year.

You can switch the list between Thread (the default) and Chronological. Thread shows messages grouped with their responses. Chronological lists all messages by the date and time they were sent.

Searching an Email List

You can either do a quick search directly on an email list's browse page, or you can do an advanced search if your quick search doesn't return results you like.

Quick Search

To do a quick search of an email list's browse page, if necessary, select the year and month as described above under Browsing an Email List. When you see the email list, enter a term or phrase to search for and click GO.

Note: Even though it appears that you can restrict the search to Subject or Message, in fact, the search looks in both areas.

This simple search treats the search terms as a phrase, ignores the case, and uses partial matching (described below under Advanced Search). It searches emails in the currently selected month and the previous month. The results come back in the search results page.

Advanced Search

To do an advanced search of an email list's browse page, click Advanced Search above the search field.

An advanced search lets you enter search dates, search multiple fields, change the order of the messages displayed, select partial or exact matching of terms, make searches case sensitive, and search for either a phrase, all search terms, or any search term. When you click Advanced Search, the following page opens:

Choose or enter values for the following fields, then click Search.

Search in Fields: Check the message fields you want to search. If you check Date, the format for a date is the same as you see in the message header, for example, 12 May 2009 or Oct 2008.
Note: Searches are restricted to the currently selected archive month and the previous month. You must select another month if you want to search months outside that limit.
This phrase droplist: The droplist lets you pick options that determine how to use the terms in the search field to the right of the droplist.
- This phrase—Match the search terms as a connected series of words, a phrase. All the terms must appear in the email together and in the same order.
- All of these words—Find all the search terms in the email. For an email to match, all the words must be somewhere in the the email fields you are searching, but not necessarily together.
- One of these words—Find any of the terms. For an email to match, only one of the search terms must be in the email.
Search term text field: Enter the phrase or terms you want to search for.

As stated below this field, if you chose All of these words or One of these words from the droplist (you aren't doing a Phrase search), you need to separate the search terms with a space or comma.
Match Case: The case of the terms (uppercase and lowercase letters) matters. For example, if the search term is Error, it matches Error and doesn't match error.
Match Whole Words: By default (this checkbox is not checked), the search uses partial word matching. For example, comm would match common, community, communication, and so on. Checking Match Whole Words makes the match exact: A word in the email must match the search term exactly.
Show First: Determines the order in which the emails are displayed, newest first or oldest first.
Results Per Page: Click the droplist to choose the number of email results that you want to returned on each page, 10, 25, or 50.

Using the Search Results Page

When you search for an email, the results come back on the search results page.

The page shown above has ten results coming back per page. To get the next set of results, click the Continue search button near the bottom of the page.

If you didn't see the results you wanted, you might want to first check the top of the page to see the parameters that were used in the search.

If you want to try a different search, click the New search button near the bottom of the page.

If you want to return to the mail archive page, you click the archive name in the top line of the page (in the page above, it is commits) or the Return to Archive link just below it.

Changing Delivery Type

With the list of mailing lists displayed (see figure above), you can click the Delivery type droplist, and then select mail to receive all emails as they're sent or digest for periodic collections of emails. Then click the Update button to change delivery types.

Managing a Single Email List

If you're a project administrator, you can manage many aspects of a single mailing list from the Manage page for a mailing list. A mailing list owner can do many of these tasks as well. To get to the Manage page, display the list of mailing lists, then click Manage List for one of the mailing lists.

You see the Manage page open for that mailing list.

On this page, you can do the following:

Renaming a mailing list

On the Manage page (see figure above), enter a new name in the List Name field.

Setting a prefix for the subject field

On the Manage page (see figure above), enter a prefix in the Add Prefix field that will be appended to the subject of all emails sent to this list.

Setting the Send Scheme

The Send Scheme droplist enables you to control who can send email to the list. It has the following settings:

restricted to local domain and subscribers—This setting is the default. List subscribers, moderators, and administrators can send email to the list. In addition, local domain messages, like commit emails from the code repository, are allowed. By default, the list will also accept messages from any_kenai_username@java.net unless the role permissions for this list have been changed. Everything else will be rejected.
private, moderated for non subscribers—List subscribers, moderators, and administrators can send email to the list. Messages from everyone else are moderated.
moderated, restricted to subscribers—Moderators can send email to that list. Messages from subscribers are moderated. All other messages will be rejected.

Making a mailing list moderated or not

By default, a list is not moderated. To make it moderated, on the Manage page (see figure above), click the Send Scheme droplist and choose either Moderated: Restricted to subscribers or Private, moderated for non subscribers. These settings are described above under Setting the Send Scheme.

Adding a list owner

You might want to add one or more mailing list owners to enable someone other than project administrators to administer a list. To add an owner, on the Manage page under List Owners (see figure above), click Add Owner, then enter the owner's email address and give the owner a Profile of privileged to enable them to manage the list. 'Question: What do Reception and Profile do? What happens when I select mail vs. nomail for Reception and normal vs. privileged for Profile?

Adding and deleting moderators

If you make a mailing list moderated, you might want to add a moderator. By default, any administrator of a project can moderate the project's mailing lists, so adding a moderator isn't required. To add a moderator, on the Manage page under List Moderators (see figure above), click Add Moderator, then enter the moderator's email address and set the Reception either to nomail (moderator has to log in and check the list) or mail (moderator receives each email to be moderated).

Moderating a mailing list

If you are a mailing list moderator, when you display the list of mailing lists, you can click Moderate List to see the latest emails that require your attention. (This figure shows Moderate List to the left of Manage List.)

When you click Moderate List, you see a page that shows you all the emails awaiting approval or rejection.

Adding and removing subscribers

If you have administrator privileges, when you display the list of mailing lists, you can click View List Subscribers to add, remove, and edit subscribers of a mailing list. (This figure shows View List Subscribers to the left of Manage List.)

Note: If you have a lot of list members and want to see more than the default 10 per page, you can increase the number of members per page. After you click View List Subscribers, go to the browser address field and add ?size=100 or ?size=150 to the URL, then press Enter. Your member lists will show 100 or 150 members per page, depending on the number you used.

When you click View List Subscribers, you see the Subscribers page.

You can add subscribers under Add Subscribers either by email address or by user name. Just click your choice above the text field.

You can delete subscribers under List of Subscribers by checking the box next to a subscriber and clicking Delete Subscribers. To select all subscribers, check the box next to Delete.

Administering All Mailing Lists

A project administrator can perform general list administration in addition to administering a single list. Some things an administrator can do is add new mailing lists, close existing mailing lists, and change the mailing list tasks that the various project roles can perform. For more information, see Managing a Project: Mailing Lists.

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