Communities as shared mailing lists

Communities may also be used as shared email distribution lists: By default, every commu­nity member has the right to send email messages to the whole community. Of course, also the members of the associated community workspace may send email messages to the com­munity.

You send an email message to a community as follows:

•      Go to the members’ page of the community workspace by clicking on the  icon shown in the ‘Share’ column of the community workspace entry.

•      Select   Send  in the action menu of the community. This will present the ‘Send an Email’ form with the community email address already inserted into the ‘To:’ field. Alternatively, you may also use  | send |  in the selection menu.

Note that  | email to |  in the selection menu may not be used for sending email messages to communities, because this action sends the email message from your local email client to the BSCW server for distribution. BSCW servers, however, cannot distribute received email mes­sages currently.

When you plan to use a community as shared mailing list, the admission policy should be hidden or closed and the community role should not include the right to invite or remove members, so that you can control community membership. As community role you should choose, e.g., Associate member, but not Member (includes right to destroy the whole commu­nity) or Manager (includes right to manage community membership).