IdeaJam(tm) : Send mail to all users in an Organisational Unit

Domino Server / Directory: Send mail to all users in an Organisational Unit

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 12:53:56 +0000

Author: Stephen Bailey
Tags: Email OU Organisation Organization
Idea:

I'm sure other admins out there would find this useful, especially if, like me, you have to manage a high number of OUs, or if your Organisation is based on location. (Simply, our users are spread around a number of countries, so we have a User/Country/Organization hierarchical structure. Actually, it's a little more complicated than that in our case - but for the purposes of this post... ;-)

My idea? Have a way of emailing everyone within an OU.

Currently, you can use wildcards (*/OU/O) to allow access to a Notes resource, but you cannot email such a group - I think you can in Exchange ;-) !

This would certainly come in handy for many admins, and would save a lot of hastle when it comes to group management.

There are other features that I would like relating to OUs but this is a great place to start!

Thanks.

re: Send mail to all users in an Organisational Unit

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 05:40:08 +0000

Author: Rob Goudvis
Comment: I promoted the idea, but I should warn you for bulk Email. There are users who will send a reply to all receivers of a mail. I have seen it happen with mails that those users did not understand.

It is the safest way to completely block your Emial-system!

re: Send mail to all users in an Organisational Unit

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 11:27:01 +0000

Author: Bastian Wieczorek
Comment: Yes... I promoted the idea also...

What I would like to have is the option to use wildcards (*/OU/O) in groups. So I can put a readersfield on this group and can so prevent bulk eMails.

re: Send mail to all users in an Organisational Unit

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 18:40:12 +0000

Author: Bill Malchisky
Comment: p.s. I wrote a bulk-email DB app in Notes which solved the problem and saved 200MB per server per day for that client. If you want to know the basics of how it works, send me an e-mail.

re: Send mail to all users in an Organisational Unit

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 18:38:55 +0000

Author: Bill Malchisky
Comment: @2 We had a Sev1 for this back in the R4 ('98) era with the exact same thing; I requested an SPR with the fix, and it included our wanting a Reader field for groups which would also prevent finding them via type-ahead, or other address pick-lists. Lotus Development Managment promised it to me in R5, then next year, then at R5.5 (which never got released), then Rnext, and onward.

Five Lotuspheres of broken promises from Development and several calls with our then Lotus Support Manager and it never got processed. "Oh we like the idea. Makes sense. We want to do it, but it won't be in this release. Definitely on the plate." -- Dev Mgr.

So, I wouldn't hold your breath for this one--unfortunately.

re: Send mail to all users in an Organisational Unit

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 12:30:00 +0000

Author: Stephen Bailey
Comment: Thanks Bill, will do (found an email address on your website). I'm sure you're not the only one to request this feature from IBM. Perhaps a big financial customer who pays enormous license fees should threaten to move to Exchange unless they add this feature? That'd do it ;-) !

Bulk mail is another problem, and there are other ideas on this site for avoiding this risk.

The bigger picture to this for me is that why does IBM support and offer hierarchical structures within Notes when you can do very little with them? Policies? Big deal! What about reporting on number of emails sent / received by an OU? Or my idea - just to send an email to everyone in an OU?

Rant over :-)

SB

re: Send mail to all users in an Organisational Unit

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 07:17:41 +0000

Author: Tripp Black
Comment: I agree this would be nice and used to want this in the past. however, for larger workgroups who don't want every cube neighbor's garage sale item sent with a wild card or a ALL Of Us group, i'd probably hate it if we actually got this request. Instead we limit you can see/use groups (with readers field) instead with or without the router ini for it to allow or not allow (default) delivery if someone blindly sent mail to such a All Of Us group.

re: Send mail to all users in an Organisational Unit

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 05:18:22 +0000

Author: Sandi Glazebrook
Comment: The only way I would be in favor of this is if you can restrict who has the ability to use this format. We have bulk e-mail lists that if the user puts it in the TO: field and then a user does a reply-to-all and the another user does a reply-to-all to not use the reply to all, and then another user does a reply to all to reply to the person who replied to all to tell the original person to not reply to all it becomes a nightmare. We've resticted out bulk e-mail lists because one day a user sent an e-mail to the entire organization that 18 other people replied-to-all to tell the others what idiots they were... oh yeah it was not just a reply to all but a reply to all with history!