Staff Lists

About

The Information Division provides automatically generated departmental staff email distribution lists.

Two lists exist for each university department (a.k.a, organisation unit):

1. ou-###@lists.unimelb.edu.au

   Reaches all staff in a department and any sub-departments.

2. ou-###-only@lists.unimelb.edu.au

   Reaches all staff in a given department only.

Where ### is the three digit HR department number. The ou is an abbreviation for "organisational unit".

List of Departments, Department Hierarchy and Lists

Go to:

• hierarchical list of organisational units.

Some Lists Are Not Generated

To reduce the risk of email worms causing major havoc with the university's email system, lists with over 2000 recipients are not generated. We hope to have a solution to this problem soon.

Lists with no recipients are also not generated.

Message Size Restrictions

The message size limit for the lists depends on the number of recipients:

• 600 or more recipients - the maximum message size is 15 Kbytes

• fewer than 600 recipients - the maximum message size is 200 Kbytes

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: I can't post to a list, what's wrong?

Is your email going out with your "From" address set to your central email account ending in "@unimelb.edu.au"?

Are you a member of the department of the list you're trying to use?

Q: What's my central email address?

Unless you have specially applied for a personal alias, your central email address is username@unimelb.edu.au, where the "username" portion is your central email username.

If you don't know your username, you can check it via the accounts web site.

If you have a personal alias and have forgotten it, please contact IT Operations on (03) 8344-6422 or via email at accounts@unimelb.edu.au.

Q: How are the list memberships generated?

The lists are generated nightly by the central Accounts Registration System using data from the University's HR database.

A list contains all staff in that department who have activated their central university email account, including honourary, visting and casual staff.

Q: Who can post to a list?

Only staff who are members of a particular department can post to that department's lists. (This includes both the ou-### list and the ou-###-only list.)

Q: How do I get myself added to a list?

The lists are automatically generated from the university's HR information. There is no mechanism for adding people to extra lists. If you are not on a list you think you should be, please check your details with HR as they may have wrong information about you.

Staff members with posting rights to any particular staff mailing list can obtain a list of addresses that are subscribed to that list.

This is achieved by sending a plain text message (no enriched text such as html, colours or special fonts) to mailserv@unimelb.edu.au containing :

send/list list-name
end

in the message body (no subject line is necessary). For example :

send/list ou-835
end

Q: What is a department? An organisational unit? What department am I in? Who else is in my department?

To get answers to HR questions and questions about the organisational structure of the university, please contact your HR representative.

http://www.hr.unimelb.edu.au/contact-us/

Q: I think the lists are broken, who do I tell?

Please lodge a fault report with the IT helpdesk by phoning (03) 8344 0888.