Standardizing communications across CELS divisions – new mailing lists

Hi, everybody. With the advent of new divisions in CELS it seems an opportune time to address an issue we’ve had in CELS for some time – consistent methods of communications among the divisions and their employees with mailing lists.
Each division had its own standards, some had automatic lists built from HR/Workday, some were Exchange/Outlook lists, some were managed by hand, there was no naming standard. It was kind of a quagmire for someone new coming in, especially as we try to increase collaborating and communication across the divisions.
I’ve been working with divisional and ALD management on this for a bit, and getting the pieces put in place took longer than I’d like, but we’re finally ready to roll out. (There’s one small part I’m still waiting on which I’ll explain below, but it’s not worth holding this up anymore.)
You can see this layout in detail here:
https://inside.cels.anl.gov/shared-services-resources/systems/cels-mailing-lists/ (login with your ANL credentials)
Summary and overview:
For each division, there are three standard lists, two of them automatically populated and one managed by hand. These are as follows, where DIV is the three letter division (BIO, CLS, CPS, DSL, EVS, LCF, MCS).
[email protected]: Employees of Argonne whose appointment is in the division. An employee shows up in Workday as an Employee (as opposed to Contingent Worker, Joint Appointment, etc.) This list is automatically managed by data from Workday.
[email protected]: Contractors,other contingent workers, joint appointments from outside Argonne whose primary appointment and affiliation is in the division. In Workday, a [C] appears after their name. This list is automatically managed by data from Workday.
[email protected]: People who don’t fit either of the above, but should get mail sent to the division at large. People who are shared across division lines, but their home division is not the main one. For example, your administrative, HR, safety, and IT staff would go on this list, since they’re in CELS and not in the division (except when the division in question is actually CLS). This list is managed by hand. You can also individually subscribe by sending mail to “[email protected]” (changing DIV to the proper division).
[email protected] (or just [email protected]): All three of the above lists for that division. So mcs-all will hit mcs-employees, mcs-affiliates, and mcs-friends.
If you’re curious as to who is on what list, the memberships are updated nightly and can be seen in this box folder: https://anl.box.com/v/CELS-Mailing-Lists
CELS-wide lists:
There are also some cels-wide lists, most of which have restricted posting rules to limit the possibility of spamming and reply-storms. You can see these on the web page above as well.
One exception is [email protected]. We’ve had some requests for people to be able to see seminar announcements from other divisions, but each division has their own away of announcing them. MCS would use “[email protected]”, BIO, EVS, and LCF would send to their staff lists (which didn’t help if you weren’t on their staff).
We’ve set up [email protected] and it’s live now. It’s a voluntary list anyone can join. I’ve already populated it with the employee and affiliate lists from the divisions, plus anyone who’s on seminars and isn’t covered in the above. Anyone is free to subscribe or unsubscribe, and new arrivals should be encouraged to subscribe.
Please use seminars for seminar announcements (or include it if you want to send to other addresses as well).
NOTE: I’m still awaiting the creation of evs-affiliates, cps-affiliates, and dsl-affiliates. Until those are live, there’s a workaround in place, and mail to [email protected], for example, will hit DSL employees, affiliates, and friends.
—
Craig Stacey, IT Director, CELS
[email protected]