I told those that attended the Technology Workshop at RSOOO that I would put some of the materials from the session online. I also thought it might be useful to others. This is a brief writeup, but it talks about using the following services with your organization.
1) Creating or getting access to an organizational/RSO e-mail address.
2) Creating mailing lists using the UMass Mailman Service.
3) Using the UDrive to store and share files amongst the members of the organization and the public.
4) Using UMass Blogs to easily create webpages for your organization.
RSO/Organizational E-mail Account http://umail.oit.umass.edu
This is the piece that ties all the resources together. All RSOs have an e-mail address associated with their organization that takes the form of:
‘name/acronym@stuaf.umass.edu’
For example, the Student Government Association (SGA) has:
‘sga@stuaf.umass.edu’
This account not only provides the organization with a permanent e-mail address (accessible through UMail at http://umail.oit.umass.edu), but also grants access to a wide variety of resources already offered by the Office of Information Technology (OIT) that can be used to better run your organization.
If you do not know the password for your organizational account or aren’t sure if you have one created, stop by the Resource Room in 316 Student Union and pickup an Information Provider Contract. This will allow you to either activate your account or have the password reset.
Mailing Lists
Organizational accounts allow you to create e-mail distribution lists (much like the sr-l list that the CSD uses to communicate with RSO officers). To create/change/manage mailing lists, visit:
You will need a non @student e-mail to create a list, but your organizational account is @stuaf, so it will work fine. It takes approximately 2 business days to have the list created, after that you can manage the membership and privacy options of the list on your own.
UDrive
UDrive provides you with a space to hold 250MB (roughly 10x that of your e-mail quota) on the Internet. Using UDrive with your organizational account provides a perfect way to:
- Share files with other members of the organization. You can give access to everyone, to anyone with a UMass account, or to specific individuals.
- Store important organizational documents (constitution, membership information, etc.) in a secure place that will be accessible to future officers.
- Running out of space on your webpage? Share a large file on UDrive and link to it from your webpage.
All student accounts have UDrive access as well, so you can share your organizational files with individual members.
UMass Blogs
The UMass Blogs site provides an incredible resource for student organizations to take advantage of. This system allows organizations to create a blog using their organizational account and provide access to members of the organization to update that blog using their own UMail accounts. Here are some things you can easily do with UMass Blogs:
- Create a simple blog to compliment a webpage that provides news and announcements
- Create a simple webpage with basic information about your group and news
- Create a rich webpage with multiple pages and loads of information
- Assign others with UMail accounts as “authors” to spread out the work of creating content for the webpage.
If you do decide to use the blog as a webpage, you can have your existing web address (http://www.umass.edu/rso/gropuname) automatically redirected to the blog address.
Visit OIT resources for Blogs for more detailed information on how to use them: http://www.oit.umass.edu/blogs/index.html
More Information, Help, Additionally Resources
This is a very brief overview that gives you an idea of some of the resources available to you. You may need more help taking advantage of these resources. Try some of the following:
OIT Website (http://www.oit.umass.edu)
The OIT website has loads of helpful information on how to use various services. You can also submit a help request there or by calling 413.545.9400.
CSD Resource Room & Advising Office
Sometimes your problem isn’t something complicated, just obscure. Come by the Resource Room or see on of the advising staff upstairs, if we can’t find an answer for you, we can point you in the right direction.