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Among the communication components, the most popular module is Dynamic Mail. It consists on a Web based facility to send e-mail to a selected group of receivers, defined on the fly by its characteristics, instead of using a predefined distribution list.
SiFEUP contains information on virtually all the potential internal message receivers: 400 teachers and 250 staff organised in 11 departments and central services, and 5000 students spread by 8 undergraduate and about 12 graduate programs. This information records several characteristics of each person, like the name, category, department and room for the personnel, or the degree, year, and photograph for the students, and is kept up-to-date by the Personnel Service and by the Academic Service, respectively. Besides, there is an optional phone number and e-mail address, which may be local (everyone has an e-mail account in the Faculty computer system) or located in another more convenient place.
The system can thus be used as an e-mail directory because, using a form like the one shown in figure 1, it is very easy to find someone even if only partial information is known. The obvious advantage is to replace the multiple private directories, always outdated, by a centralised and maintained service, thus improving one-to-one communication.
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Figure 1. Search form for teachers.
ut the full power of the Dynamic Mail module comes from its ability to replicate a message to everyone in an arbitrarily selected group. In fact, if the search criteria specified in the form is general enough, several people may qualify. For instance, if only the category is specified, it is possible to select all the full professors and send them a message reminding of a meeting. The message will reach all of them including the recently appointed, because as soon as their new category is recorded they start to belong implicitly to the list without any other action. This stems from the integrated approach taken by SiFEUP, different from the traditional distribution list services.
As another example, it is possible to instantly send a message to all the 2nd year students of a certain degree, or to all the students named Silva. The form used to do this is shown in figure 2. The right list box contains all the recipients found by the previous query. One can refine it by marking only a subset as the actual selection. The contents of a message is basically text. Currently, the concept of attached documents is not supported.
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