Google Groups / Email Lists

We use Google Groups as the tool to create email distribution lists. These emails are one way how working groups and project teams communicate, we send out regular updates to these emails lists and encourage conversations within group members.

• You join a Working Group and/or Project by being added to the Google Group for that project.

• Only members of the Google Group can email other members of the Google Group.

• Google Groups are just emails, so myproject@greensoftware.foundation is a Google Group called myproject and you can email all members of that group using the above email (myproject is not a real Google Group).

• Only PMs can add users to Google Groups.

• Only employees from member organizations can join Google Groups.

• Only work emails should be used to add individuals to Google Groups.

• There is a self service form people can use to add themselves to the right Google Groups for a project.

• Even if Google Groups page is blocked for you at work, you should still be able to send/recieve emails to that Groups.

Creating a new Google Group

When creating a new group, make sure you give some thought to things such as: who can join the group? who can email the group? will someone moderate the conversations?

Understand how private you want it to be and what would be the impact of allowing people to join and post freely.

If you are creating an group that will recieve emails from the outside, ensure to allow it to receive emails from the public.

Suggested settings

• who can see the group: entire organisation

• who can view members: entire organisation

• who can view conversations: group members

• who can post: group members (this means that external email cannot email the inbox - not to be used for accounts emails)

• who can join: entire organisation (this means that non GSF emails need to ask for permission to be added)

• who can view email other member's email addresses: only group members

• message moderation: no moderation (consider who joins and monitor the growth of the group. Moderating the group means that someone always need to access the inbox)

• new members restrictions: no posting restriction

• spam message handling: moderate and notify content moderators (if you disabled the option of receiving emails from non-GSF addresses, outside emails will end up in the “pending conversations” and the moderator will have to check and manually accept them)

• allow external members: ON

Extra tips:

Always include a short description when creating a new group. This will be useful in future audits.

Include a Welcome message when creating a new group (or add it through the group settings)

Assign an extra group manager or owner whenever possible

Naming convention

• [accounts] xxx > the email is linked to a login (or multiple)

• [gsf] xxx > general email lists for the Foundation (i.e. internal newsletter, help desk & steering committee)

• [proj] xxx > for projects

• [wg] xxx > working group

How to join an email group

You can find information about existing groups under each project/working group.

In order to join, please email help@greensoftware.foundation

OR

Use the subscription form to add yourself to the right Google Group

External resources and tutorials

• Google Help Center

• Google Groups Overview