Massmail Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

No.  By enrolling as a student and/or taking a job with the University, you inherently agree to accept unsolicited communications from your academic and/or professional supervisors. This includes Massmail.

Every email that is sent via Massmail has two distinguishing traits: the Subject line, and the "X-Massmail-Tag:" email header.  First, all Massmail Subject lines begin with "MASSMAIL –" followed by that message's distinctive subject.

Second, all Massmail emails contain a "X-Massmail-Tag:" email header, which contains the "tag" or tracking number of that mailing request. Some email programs (such as Outlook or Express Mail) typically do not show this particular email header by default, but you can find the header by using the email program's tools.

Note: To increase readership, some Massmails dealing with security issues will not contain the abovementioned MASSMAIL distinguishing traits.

You can check the authenticity of any Massmail message by looking in the Massmail Archive. If a message is not in the archive, it was not sent via the official Massmail system. The Massmail Archive is at https://broadcast.illinois.edu/massmail/mm.cgi?app=archive.

The Massmail system is desinged to provide timely electronic distribution of official information through administrative channels on campus. These messages are primarily reserved for a) time-sensitive critical campus announcements/notices that need to reach a broad segment of campus and b) campus safety emergencies.

Massmail is not used to distribute event or other information that is not "official University business." Other distribution modes are in place, such as the eweek newsletter and Inside Illinois, to handle announcements that do not fit the criteria of Massmail. To view a listing of suggested alternatives, see "Are there alternatives to Massmail?," below.

The following are some simple questions you should ask yourself before sending a Massmail:

• Are there compelling reasons why the information must be sent by Massmail?
• Does the information need to reach its recipients with the immediacy of Massmail?
• Are there not effective alternative methods of dissemination that will get the information to those who need it?
• Does the information need to reach an entire category of Massmail recipients (e.g., all students, all staff)?

Massmail works best when used sparingingly, so that people pay more attention to each new message.  It also works best when the information disseminated is relevant to everyone in the audience, so that recipients continue to regard Massmail as a source of useful information.

Yes. There are well-established channels for communicating routine information of all kinds; these include:

• The most notable alternative to Massmail is eweek, a weekly announcement email newsletter sent out to all employees of the Urbana-Champaign campus. If you have a short announcement that only needs to go to employees, eweek is a great solution. Best of all, it is free to publish announcements in eweek.
• The campus calendar can be used to publicize a lecture or talk that is open to campus. Some of these events are published on the campus home page.
• Inside Illinois, the faculty-staff bi-weekly newspaper, publicizes events covering a wide range of topics of interest for faculty and staff members.
• The Daily Illini is often used to publicize events, conferences and symposia, new courses, and the like. Members of the campus community turn to the Daily Illini to find exactly this sort of information.
• The Advisor-L Listserv is commonly used to disseminate information about course offerings to all undergraduate advisors.
• Flyers announcing upcoming lectures and other events are routinely sent to the relevant department offices for posting on bulletin boards.
• Individual mailings can be made to the particular faculty and staff members who will be interested in a lecture or other event.

See the page "Should I Use Massmail?" for further detail on all of these alternatives for Massmail.

The Massmail submission process requires the sender to select an administrative office for approval. You should select the administrative office that is responsible for the general area in which your message falls. If you are uncertain which administrative office to select for approving your message, inquire at one of these offices regarding your message.  The offices are:

• Office of the President
• Office of the Chancellor
• Office of the Provost & Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs
• Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research
• Office of the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs

• Keep it short.  Five lines will be read by almost everyone, but two pages will be read by almost nobody.  If you need to convey a lot of detailed information to readers, post the full information on a website, and use Massmail to direct readers to the website's URL.

• Focus Your Message.  Edit your message carefully, and delete all unnecessary words.  The first few sentences should contain all the essential information, including why you are sending this message to this group of recipients.

• Provide contact information.  Tell your readers whom they can contact if they have specific questions or are interested in more details.  Remind readers that they can reply to the Massmail's "Reply-To" address, and include actual email addresses, phone numbers, or website URLs in the body of your message.

• Avoid multiple Massmail messages on the same subject.  Before requesting or releasing your message, make sure it is complete and contains everything the reader needs to know.  This helps avoid the need to submit any unnecessary follow-up or clarification messages.  Massmail works best when used sparingingly, so that people pay more attention to each new message.

Massmail messages go through three major steps before delivery: Submission, Approval, and Release. Each step requires an action performed by either the Sender (the person who submits the request, and who releases the finalized message) or the Approver (the person who reviews and either approves or rejects the message).

Please see the page "How to Send a Massmail" for detailed instructions.

Massmail sends messages in a text-only format, meaning that you cannot embed active hyperlinks in the message. However, you can type out a full URL (including the prefix "http://"), and many email programs will automatically convert the URL into an active hyperlink when the reader opens the message.

When you type out URLs, enclose the URL in greater/less-than braces: < >. This assures that normal punctuation such as trailing periods or commas are not included in the URL when the email program converts the URL or when a reader copies and pastes the URL into web browser.

For example: "For more information, please see <http://www.cites.illinois.edu/mail/other.html>."

You should allow up to three business days for approval of your Massmail submission. If three days have passed and you have not received a confirmation message at the email address that you specified in your "Reply-To" address, call the approver's office to verify that they have received and are considering the request.

Once the request has been approved, the confirmation email you receive will contain a Tag Number and Passcode required to release the mailing. You can now delay the actual release of the message until the day before the desired delivery date.

You should release the mailing during business hours the day before the desired delivery date because the Massmail server needs to process the message overnight. Almost all Massmail is sent out the morning after the day the mailing is released. For example, if you want your mailing to be delivered early Thursday morning, you should release the message during business hours that Wednesday. Note: Messages do not abide by a Monday - Friday release schedule, and messages released on a Friday will be sent the following day, Saturday. If you would like the Massmail to be delivered on Monday, you should release it on Sunday.

Choosing the exact time a Massmail is sent is almost impossible. Delivering a Massmail mailing to the whole campus takes a minimum of two hours and can sometimes take longer, depending on network conditions. All Massmail is sent out in the very early morning hours to help reduce the impact on network traffic and server load. Select administrators and the Office of Public Safety can have Massmail sent at any time.

First, make direct contact (either by phone or in person) with the administrative office who will be reviewing your message, and inform them of the need for rapid turnaround. Give them as much detail as possible about the proposed content of your message, and try to get a sense of what your message needs to say or not say to be approved quickly.

Submit your Massmail message through the regular process, and wait for the approval from the administrative office. It may help to find out who exactly will perform the approval process online, and get in touch with him or her. 

Once the administrative office has approved the message in the Massmail system, you will receive an approval notification with a Tag Number and Passcode. You can now release the message for delivery. Keep in mind, though, that the message will not be delivered until the following morning, when server traffic is low.

Every Massmail is required to have a valid "Reply-To" email address. If you wish to reach the department or person responsible for the mailing, simply reply to the Massmail, and your mail will be sent to someone with additional information on the message's subject.

The "Reply-To" address of a Massmail belongs to someone closely tied to the original author of the message, so you can simply reply to the message.

Although the content is the sole responsibility of the sender(s), the editorial decision of whether to send the message lies with the administrative office that reviewed the mailing. The administrative office that approved a particular Massmail mailing is listed at the bottom of the message. If you feel that you received a mailing that was not beneficial to your status as a student or employee of the University, you can contact that office directly to relay your suggestions or concerns.

You cannot have another copy of a Massmail sent to you, but you can look up any previous Massmail mailings in the Massmail Archive section of the Massmail Homepage: https://broadcast.illinois.edu/massmail/mm.cgi?app=archive.

This archive contains all Massmail mailings sent to campus groups, not just those that were sent to you. Massmail messages are kept in the archive for at least a year. More recent mailings appear at the top of the page.

As a general rule, all University of Illinois employees are included in the Massmail address lists. Certain categories of employee types, however, are not included in Massmail deliveries: employees designated as employee type "T" (indicating working-retirees), and employee type "U" (indicating workers unpaid by the University).

If you are not receiving Massmails and think you might fall into one of the above categories, talk to the business office of your department or unit to see if they can change your employee type code to one of those included in Massmail address feeds. The following list of employee types and associated codes should serve as a guideline for the business office to place employees in the proper groups.

A	=	faculty/academic
B	=	academic professional
C, D, E	=	civil service, including hourly
H	=	academic/grad hourly
P	=	post doc, res assoc and intern

If you qualify for being tagged with one of the above codes, the change must be reflected in Banner. Simply changing the individual job appointment is not sufficient to update the records Massmail uses for mailings. For further information, you can contact the Massmail service manager at massmail@illinois.edu.