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 to    Email  in the action menu of the community. This will present the ‘Send Email’ form with the community email address already inserted into the ‘To:’ field. Alternatively, you may also use  (Send Email) in the multi-selection tool­bar.

Note that  (Email) in the multi-selection toolbar 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).