Emailing Students

Send an email to the students in your classes or to your advisees.

Who you can email

What you can choose depends on the role you are currently acting as:

Acting as	You can email
Faculty	The students in any section you teach
Advisor	All of your current advisees

Some offices may also be allowed to email Student Lists and Cohorts, up to a limit set for their role. If your role cannot email anyone, the compose screen says so; switch to your teaching or advising role, or ask a system administrator.

Sending an email

1. Go to Communications > Compose Email. From the Grade Roster you can also click Email class, which opens the composer with that section already chosen.
2. Choose the recipients:
   • My classes — pick a term, then tick one or more sections.
   • My advisees — tick Email all my current advisees.
3. Check the count. The screen shows how many students will receive the message, and how many will be skipped because they have no email address on file.
4. Choose the From address. You can send from your own institutional address, and from any shared office mailbox an administrator has assigned to you.
5. Enter a Subject and the Message. Formatting such as paragraphs, bold, lists, links, headings and tables is kept (see Tables below).
6. Optionally attach files (see Attachments below).
7. Optionally tick Send a copy to me.
8. Click Send and confirm. When files are attached, the confirmation says how many.

Each student receives their own copy, addressed only to them, so students never see each other's addresses. The message is queued and delivered over the next few minutes.

No-reply address

If your role allows it, the From list also offers the institution's no-reply address. Students cannot reply to it, and a line saying so is added to the end of the message. Use your own address when you want answers.

Tables

The toolbar under the message editor has table buttons. Put the cursor where the table should go and click Table to insert a 3 × 3 table, then use Add row below, Add column to the right, Delete row, Delete column and Delete table with the cursor inside the table. A table pasted from a spreadsheet is kept as a table too.

Your own colors and styling are removed when the message is sent; every table is sent with plain borders and spacing so that it looks the same in every student's mail program. Cells merged across rows or columns stay merged.

Attachments

Whether you can attach files depends on who you are emailing, and is set by a system administrator. Once you have chosen your recipients, an Attachments area appears if files are allowed for them. Click Attach files and choose one or more files. The line next to the button shows the limits: how many files, how large each may be, how large they may be in all, and which file types are allowed. Click the × beside a file to remove it.

• If there is no Attachments area, files are not allowed for these recipients. You cannot turn this on yourself; ask a system administrator, or share the file another way (for example through your learning management system) and link to it.
• Limits can differ by recipient. Emailing a class, emailing your advisees, and emailing Student Lists or Cohorts each have their own limits. If one message goes to more than one kind, the strictest limits apply. If you change the recipients after attaching files and the new recipients do not allow them, the screen says Attachments can't be sent to these recipients and you must remove the files to send.
• Some types are never allowed, whatever the limits: programs and scripts, macro-enabled Office files (such as .docm or .xlsm), web pages and SVG images, and zip or other archives.
• A file must really be what its name says. A file renamed to look like a PDF or an image is refused, as is an empty file.

Each student receives the files with their own copy of the message.

Checking delivery

Communications > Sent Email lists every message you have sent, with its delivery status: Queued, Sending, Sent, Partly sent or Failed. Open a message to see each recipient's status, and to download any files you attached. A delivery that fails is retried several times before it is marked Failed.

Things to know

• The message goes to the student's institutional address where they have one.
• You cannot send email while impersonating another user.
• Office mailboxes are assigned by a system administrator. If you need to send from a shared address you do not see in the From list, ask for it to be assigned to you.

Need Help?

• Access to email lists or a shared mailbox: Contact a system administrator
• A student missing from a class: Check the Grade Roster
• Technical problems: Contact IT Help Desk