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Student Group Management Tool

Contents

Description

The student group tool is for creating subject based mailing lists and groups.

Mailing lists and/or groups can be setup for subjects covering complete class lists, campus based lists and subordinate subject lists.

Definitions:

  • Mailing list: A list which can be emailed, typically at an address like listname@lists.monash.edu.au. It also contains controls governing who can mail to the list and where replies go. A mailing list on its own can not be used to control access to web sites or newsgroups
  • Group: A list which can be used for access controls on web pages and newsgroups (ie so that only members of the group can access a particular page or service)
  • Sub list: If a subject has related subject codes of ABC1234A (ie ending in a letter) then these will be available as seperate sub lists. They can then be mailed seperately or used as access controls independent of campus or subject lists.

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Location of the tools

The tools can be found at:
https://mdsadmin.monash.edu.au/cgi-bin/admin/menu

Click on the "Student group management tool" link.

When asked to login, use your AuthCate username and password.

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Access restrictions

To use this tool you must:
  • login using a valid staff AuthCate account.
  • connect from a machine that is registered on the Monash network (eg 130.194.*)

Access to this tool is only available to ITS Production Facilities staff. To request changes to subject groups, please contact the ITS Service Desk.

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Creating a Subject Group

  1. Enter the subject code for the subject you wish to create groups for.
  2. Select which lists are to be created. Initially, the class list will be ticked along with any campus based lists that would have students in them (ie there is at least one student studying the subject at that campus).
  3. Choose what type of lists are required (mailing lists, groups or both).
  4. Choose who to include in the group (internal only or internal and external users).
  5. Configure the mailing list options as appropriate.
  6. Click "Save Changes" to create the lists.

Note: After creating a mail list, you will need to wait up to one day for the email address of the list to be activated. This is because the listname@lists.monash.edu.au entry in the namerouter is only updated at hourly intervals during office hours.

Note: The members of a group will be sourced from the Monash Directory Service. The lists are also generated based on the monashteachingcommittment and monashenrolledsubject fields. Hence, students or teaching staff that do not have the requested subject listed in their entry will not be listed, and external users won't be included either.

Once a list is created it will remain until it is deleted. The members in all lists are updated every morning.

Managing and Deleting a Subject Group

Once a subject group has been created, it can be managed by the same process as per creating a group. The only difference is that rather than the default lists and options being displayed, the currently active lists and options will be ticked. Lists can be deleted by unticking them and then saving the changes.

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Mail Properties

Posting to the list can be moderated with the following options:

  • Subject teaching staff only (announcement/news)
  • Subject students and teaching staff (discussion)
  • Anyone (open)

Replies to the list can be set to go:

  • Back to the list
  • Back to the sender
  • To an alternate address

Note: The behaviour of replies can not be guaranteed, since users can override the restrictions that are put in place - for example, they may ignore the Reply-To: field and reply directly to the list. If the list is moderated by restricting who can post to it, then this is not much of a problem, and most mail clients will correctly handle the Reply-To field correctly.

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Using the groups

In the directory, the groups are stored under "ou=Student Groups, ou=Student, o=Monash University, c=au".

To use groups that include external people, you will need to configure your program or .htaccess file to use "hybrid.monash.edu.au" as the directory server. They external groups are stored in the "ou=Student Groups, ou=External Users, o=Monash University, c=au" tree.

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Related documentation

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