During the past eight months OIT has been engineering a new mailing list replacement for ListProc. ListProc has served us well over the past years but recently it has begun to show its age. Messages frequently hung in the system, list management was cumbersome and the online archives left much to be desired. The replacement for ListProc is an open source product called Sympa (http://www.sympa.org/). OIT staff presented the new system to a large group at the Departmental IT meeting in May 2006. During this meeting much appreciated feedback was received with regard to the configuration and setup. The result is UMBC’s new list management package.
OIT will be migrating to the new system on Sunday, August 20th. All active lists will be migrated beginning at 2:00 p.m. and ending by 6:00 p.m. During this time all lists will be unavailable to the campus.
FAQs
***How Do I View My List(s)***
Sympa has a very easy to use Web interface. If you visit http://lists.umbc.edu and login using your UMBC username and password you will be able to manage your lists and subscribe to others.
HINT: lists.umbc.edu will only work after Sunday, August 20th. If you would like to see the interface before please visit http://sympa.umbc.edu
***Will List Subscribers Notice Any Difference***
List subscribers will notice that messages will be From: listname@lists.umbc.edu instead of the old naming convention of From: listname@listproc.umbc.edu
***What Happens if a Message is Accidentally Sent to the Old List Address?***
For the foreseeable future OIT will maintain an alias for all existing list addresses. If someone sends a message to listname@listproc.umbc.edu it will be forwarded to the correct list address of listname@lists.umbc.edu
***Will My Customized E-mail Filters Still Work?***
All personalized mail filters created using UMBC’s centrally managed system will be converted to use “lists.umbc.edu”. You will not need to modify those rules created at http://accounts.umbc.edu under Email > Email Filtering
Unfortunately, locally created filters are client specific and reside on the local machine. OIT will not be able to modify filters created by the local e-mail client. It will be up to each individual user to modify their respective filters to reflect the new naming convention.
***What Has Changed in the New System?***
*List Address
Please note the list address has been changed to the industry standard of “lists.umbc.edu” Please do not advertise “listproc.umbc.edu” once this migration is complete.
*Web Interface
The web interface is cleaner, easier to use and allows owners complete management of their list.
*Username changes don't impact subscriptions and are seamless to the list owner
All three aliases plus the username can be used to post messages. Customer can have their mail client setup with user.name@umbc.edu, username@umbc.edu etc. and Sympa will allow any of them to post the message.
*Live Synchs to LDAP (UMBC’s Identity Management System):
Campus groups can be automatically enrolled in a given list. For instance if we have the need for an UMBC-Faculty@lists.umbc.edu then we can set this list up to poll LDAP for ALL faculty. The list owner does not need to manually update the list as they do now, instead will be automatically updated in real time.
*RSS Feeds:
You can use RSS readers or web page plugins to publish the archives from