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The JISCMail Newsletter for January has now been distributed. Please see https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER;%2BoY3Xg;20100127170904%2B0000
If you would like to subscribe to the JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER list, send an email to listserv@jiscmail.ac.uk with SUBSCRIBE JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER in the body of the email.
On Tuesday 9th February, during the normal 'At Risk' period between 07:00 and 10:00 am, software upgrades will be performed at the JISCMail site. Although the JISCMail service itself will be unaffected, and acceptance / delivery of mail will take place as normal, there will be short interruptions to access of the JISCMail web during this time. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.
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The JISCMail Newsletter for January has now been distributed. Please see https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER;iGZBrw;20100226135831%2B0000
If you would like to subscribe to the JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER list, send an email to listserv@jiscmail.ac.uk with SUBSCRIBE JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER in the body of the email.
There is an on-going problem with Hotmail addresses, where Hotmail occasionally sends an automatic 'signoff' command to Listserv which Listserv then responds to. If this happens, please go to www.jiscmail.ac.uk/LISTNAME (where 'LISTNAME@ is the name of your chosen list) for a link to resubscribe.
Please note that we recommend using an alternative address to Hotmail wherever possible.
We are currently experiencing problems delivering to the msu.edu domain. However, we are in contact with them to try and resolve this issue.
JISCMail would like to invite you to be among the first to preview and test our LISTSERV 16.0 upgrade which will be released on JISCMail in March. The changes which are of interest to our subscribers are:
If you would like to test the new version, please send an email to helpline@jiscmail.ac.uk.
Institutions using Emailfiltering.Com (run by Webroot) may be experiencing delays with mail delivery from JISCMail. We are in contact with them, and with the institutions involved, to try and resolve this issue.
Affected institutions include anglia.ac.uk, gcal.ac.uk, lsbu.ac.uk and rhul.ac.uk
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The JISCMail Helpline will be unmanned for the Easter break from Friday 2nd April to Monday 5th April inclusive. However, the JISCMail service will continue to operate as normal during this period.
If you have any problems, please email the Helpline and your enquiries will be dealt with upon our return.
We have upgraded to LISTSERV 16.0 to provide extra functionality and to be in keeping with the latest version of LISTSERV. Please note their maybe times when the JISCMail web interface is slow today due to the re-indexing of archives for the new version.
The changes which are of interest are:
For information on professional looking newsletters please see: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/help/subscribers/newsletters.html
New online posting options:

To post a message to a group, go to your group homepage e.g. http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/jiscmail-newsletter and click on post new message (you must be logged in; you may be asked to enter your login details). To view options click on show advanced. Here are the new options available to you:
New archive preferences:

New default homepage look:

Additional List Owner features:
There has been a problem with our mail delivery today; messages were received successfully, but large queues built up for delivery. We have now resolved the problem and mail is being delivered again - it is not necessary to resend your mail.
Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.
JISCMail are pleased to announce that LISTSERV will be upgraded to version 16.0 on the 23rd March 2010. There will be some downtime in the sceduled at risk period between 7 - 9am.The changes that will be of interest to our list owners and subscribers are:
If you have any queries, please email helpline@jiscmail.ac.uk
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The JISCMail Newsletter for April has now been distributed. Please see https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER;30eb76b.1004p
If you would like to subscribe to the JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER list, send an email to listserv@jiscmail.ac.uk with SUBSCRIBE JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER in the body of the email.
We are currently experiencing some networking issues at STFC. Some domains are having problems contacting our site. Our networking team are currently looking into this and we apologise for any inconvenience.
JISCMail has launched a brand new website and re-designed logo today. The site, www.jiscmail.ac.uk, was designed to be easier to navigate, taking into account all relevant feedback from our customers, and we hope you find this more intuitive.

We have made major improvements to the websites navigation which includes enabling all links to be available on every page. The homepage allows you to minimise any of the boxes if you do not wish to view their content.

This innovative new design incorporates a 'My Groups box' which allows subscribers and owners to view and access which groups they belong to from the JISCMail homepage. If you are not logged in there is a link to do so.

JISCMail has various collaborative tools such as Surveys, Make a Meeting and Newsletters which were not previously displayed on the homepage. To show the range of features we have to offer, we have included links to further information.

The website has been fully Accessibility checked, and we are excited to incorporate the JISC TechDis toolbar which provides a range of productivity and accessibility tools which helps users customise the way they view and interact with web pages. Features include a text to speech function, spell checking and dictionary facilities, and a feature for gathering referencing information within a web page. It also provides simple ways to adjust the magnification or font used on web pages.

We now publish our latest news items on our homepage so you can quickly see any new developments or important information on the operation of the service.
We will be upgrading the hardware on our mail server on Tuesday 4th May. The JISCMail service will unavailable between 08:30 - 09:00 for approximately 30 minutes.
Apologies for any inconvenience caused.
There have been some networking problems at the JISCMail site, which have caused intermittant breaks to the service availability via the web. These have now been resolved, but we apologise for any inconvenience experienced.
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The JISCMail service will be unavailable for essential maintenance on Saturday June 12th between 10am - 6pm for approximately 4 hours. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.
The JISCMail Helpline will be unmanned for bank holiday from Friday 28th May to Monday 31st May inclusive. However, the JISCMail service will continue to operate as normal during this period. If you have any problems, please email the Helpline and your enquiries will be dealt with upon our return.
Emergency essential maintenance was performed on the mailers this morning between 07:30 - 08:30. Any messages sent to JISCMail at this time were queued. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.
JISCMail has produced a podcast for the RSC West Midlands Annual Online Event in May 2010. The theme of the event was the 'Journey' and the podcast focussed on what JISCMail has provided over the last 10 years to support Higher Education, Further Education, Research, Adult Community Learning and Work Based Learning.
Right click the link and save it to your PC.
We have successfully upgraded the hardware on our mail server. This took a little longer than expected - apologies for any inconvenience caused.
We will be upgrading the hardware on our database server on Tuesday 18th May. As a result, the Surveys, Discussion Room and Make a Meeting tools will be unavailable until this work is complete. This upgrade will take place between 07:00 - 09:00. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.
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The JISCMail Newsletter for May has now been distributed. Please see https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER;c5f58237.1006p
If you would like to subscribe to the JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER list, send an email to listserv@jiscmail.ac.uk with SUBSCRIBE JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER in the body of the email.
JISCMail would like to invite you to try our new calendaring tool which we are adding to our service soon. You can organise, add and share events with your colleagues even if they are not registered to use JISCMail. Our calendaring invitations work on many different mail clients and can be accessed via any JISCMail online group or remotely via CALDav.
Benefits include:We have a help page here to get you started: http://aux.jiscmail.ac.uk/tools/calendaring.html. We will be adding extra content to this over the next couple of weeks.
You can access the calendar directly here: http://aux.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/calendar.cgi
We have set up a development server in which you use to test. Please email helpline@jiscmail.ac.uk for a group to test the calendars with.
You may have to register a new password: https://aux.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?GETPW1=LMGT1.
Please email your comments to: helpline@jiscmail.ac.uk
JISCMail essential maintenance is now complete. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.
The JISCMail service will be unavailable for essential maintenance on Saturday June 12th between 2pm - 6pm for approximately 4 hours. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.
The JISCMail Newsletter for May has now been distributed. Please see https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER;cce9d6d9.1006p
If you would like to subscribe to the JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER list, send an email to listserv@jiscmail.ac.uk with SUBSCRIBE JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER in the body of the email.
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The JISCMail Newsletter for June has now been distributed. Please see https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER;896f55df.1007p
If you would like to subscribe to the JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER list, send an email to listserv@jiscmail.ac.uk with SUBSCRIBE JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER in the body of the email.
JISCMail is pleased to announce we have released our new calendaring tool. Please see: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/tools/calendars.html
You can organise, add and share events with your colleagues even if they are not registered to use JISCMail. Our calendaring invitations work on many different mail clients and can be accessed via any JISCMail online group or remotely via CALDav.
Benefits include:
JISCMail is pleased to announce that we will be releasing our new calendaring tool onto the JISCMail service on Tuesday 27th July. We estimate that the service will be down for around an hour between 8am - 9am.
You can organise, add and share events with your colleagues even if they are not registered to use JISCMail. Our calendaring invitations work on many different mail clients and can be accessed via any JISCMail online group or remotely via CALDav.
Benefits include:
Site maintenance will be carried out during the Tuesday 'At Risk' period on 6/7/2010 and the JISMail web may be unavailable for short periods between 07:30 and 08:00. Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.
Today there were some problems sending emails. Apologies for any inconvenience that may have been caused.
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The JISCMail Newsletter for August has now been distributed. https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER;ad057522.1008p If you would like to subscribe to the JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER list, send an email to listserv@jiscmail.ac.uk with SUBSCRIBE JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER in the body of the email.
The JISCMail Helpline will be unmanned for the bank holiday from Saturday 21st August to Tuesday 31st August inclusive. However, the JISCMail service will continue to operate as normal during this period. If you have any problems, please email the Helpline and your enquiries will be dealt with upon our return.
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The JISCMail Newsletter for September has now been distributed. https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER;d6ff4ac2.1009p If you would like to subscribe to the JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER list, send an email to listserv@jiscmail.ac.uk with SUBSCRIBE JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER in the body of the email.
We have now opened our public archives to search engines. All public information has been made available to search via search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. Previously searching across many public groups was difficult but this will now be possible. We hope that although your group names are searchable via search engines, the additional archive search will improve visibility of your public groups and attract more members to make valuable contributions to your discussions. The search can be accessed via any group homepage (https://www.JISCMail.ac.uk/yourgroupname) or simply search via your favourite search engine such as Google.
We are asking all group owners to check their list configuration so that if they want their group archives to become searchable or if they do not wish the group archives to be searchable, changes will need to be made to the List Configuration.
To change your List Configuration:
Publishing JISCMail group archives to services such as Twitter or Facebook is already possible via our RSS feeds. To learn how to do this visit JISCMail's newsletter article for Twitter or Facebook
Search box added to group homepages

You can search all JISCMail's public content from all group homepages (http://www.JISCMail.ac.uk/yourgroupname). The search is located on the right hand side in a box titled 'Search JISCMail’s open content'
New improved JISCMail website search
Search across the JISCMail help pages, open content and group names in one box on the JISCMail homepage (http://www.JISCMail.ac.uk).
Points to note
Please note there will be 2 periods of at risk for JISCMail in September.
On Tuesday 21st September between 7:30am - 10am, there will be an essential upgrade of the Firewall software/firmware at the RAL site where JISCMail is located. The service will be at risk during this time and may experience some downtime.
On Tuesday 28th September, the JISCMail mail servers will be taken down for essential maintenance in the at risk period between 7am - 9am.
Apologies for any inconvenience caused.
We’d like to tell you about an enhancement we’re making to JISCMail’s current search tools on the 21st of September. We are opening up our public archives to search engines. All public information will be made available to search via search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. Previously searching across many public groups was difficult but this will now be possible. We hope that although your group names are searchable via search engines, the additional archive search will improve visibility of your public groups and attract more members to make valuable contributions to your discussions. The search can be accessed via any group homepage (https://www.JISCMail.ac.uk/yourgroupname) or simply search via your favourite search engine such as Google.
Although this is not a groundbreaking development, it is the first time JISCMail’s public archives have been open to search. Our developers have working hard to ensure that private content is not compromised ensuring our trust with our group owners and subscribers remains in tact. In the past performance issues have stopped us taking this step but with our brand new servers and using Google sitemap, we have ensured this won’t be a problem. There is no need to worry about spamming issues as anyone searching public archives will be unable to view email addresses unless they are logged into the JISCMail website. It is easy to change your group between public and private as you see fit.
We are asking all group owners to check their list configuration so that if they want their group archives to become searchable or if they do not wish the group archives to be searchable, changes will need to be made to the List Configuration.
To change your List Configuration:
Publishing JISCMail group archives to services such as Twitter or Facebook is already possible via our RSS feeds. To learn how to do this visit JISCMail's newsletter article for Twitter or Facebook
Points to note:
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The JISCMail Newsletter for October has now been distributed. https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER;12e7215e.1010p If you would like to subscribe to the JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER list, send an email to listserv@jiscmail.ac.uk with SUBSCRIBE JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER in the body of the email.
JISCMail's RSCtv webinar is now available to watch online here: https://sas.elluminate.com/site/external/recording/playback/link/meeting.jnlp?suid=M.B1C307256A76FD970BE01D84F30EE5&sid=2009077.
JISCMail is evolving – it is no longer just for plain text email discussions, and this webinar aims to take you on a tour of all the exciting new features and tools JISCMail has to offer. In April we launched a new website which has improved navigation, displays all our features on the homepage and has personalisation via the new ‘My groups’ box. We’ll take you through how to get the best from our new website, how to search for new groups to join and how to search our extensive archives on many different subjects.
To view other RSCtv webinars, please visit: http://www.rsc-sw-scotland.ac.uk/rsctv/RSCtv.htm
The Regional Support Centre has launched a new series of 20 minute lunchtime on-line video presentations on recent developments, interesting features or future trends. The viewer needs nothing more than a network enabled PC or Mac running an up-to-date browser. JISCMail will be giving a presentation in October.
19th October 2010 - RSCtv: An overview of JISCMail
Venue: online
Time: 12.30 - 1 pm
JISCMail is evolving – it is no longer just for plain text email discussions, and this webinar aims to take you on a tour of all the exciting new features and tools JISCMail has to offer. In April we launched a new website which has improved navigation, displays all our features on the homepage and has personalisation via the new ‘My groups’ box. We’ll take you through how to get the best from our new website, how to search for new groups to join and how to search our extensive archives on many different subjects.
In addition to the website we’ve added the Calendars tool and the Newsletter feature. We will show you how to schedule events or meetings with your group members or people who are not using JISCMail. The newsletter feature enables you to send professional looking HTML newsletters without any coding experience. We have a wide range of newsletter templates that you can use or you can design your own. The webinar will also refresh your memory on our survey and files area tools.
There will be an opportunity for you to ask any questions you have about JISCMail or you can contact our friendly helpline: helpline@jiscmil.ac.uk
Book online: http://www.rsc-sw-scotland.ac.uk/events_bookingRSCtv.htm
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The JISCMail Newsletter for November has now been distributed. https://jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER;43705cf1.1011p If you would like to subscribe to the JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER list, send an email to listserv@jiscmail.ac.uk with SUBSCRIBE JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER in the body of the email.
At JISCMail, we are adding a new way to contact the support team. Along with our telephone and e-mail support we now accept queries through our new Web Helpline. The web helpline provides a user friendly web based interface for support queries.
The Web Helpline also shows your current and previous correspondence with our e-mail helpline. If you’ve e-mailed our helpline support in the past the web helpline will show all of your old queries and the solutions from the JISCMail team.
Visit the Web Helpline Now
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The JISCMail Newsletter for December has now been distributed. https://jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER;d9b753bd.1012p If you would like to subscribe to the JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER list, send an email to listserv@jiscmail.ac.uk with SUBSCRIBE JISCMAIL-NEWSLETTER in the body of the email.
Please note that the JISCMail office will be closed from 25th December to 3rd January inclusive.
We will be accepting emails into the helpline during this period and will answer them as soon as possible when we return.
Best wishes to all JISCMail users for a Happy and Peaceful Christmas and New Year
This morning we experienced problems with the networking to our site. This meant that for a while, access to the JISCMail web was interrupted and mail delivery was affected. The issue has now been resolved and mail that had been queued is now being delivered.
We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused.
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