How to Manage Iowa State University ListServes

This is a demo of how to use ASW to manage @iastate.edu list serves. You must be an Iowa State student to access to ASW.

Step 1: Access "Account Services on the Web" (or ASW)

Direct your browser to http://asw.iastate.edu

Step 2: Log in With Your ISU Net-ID

Use your Net-ID and password to log into the page. Make sure that you're at a .iastate.edu extension before ever typing your password!

Step 3: Click "Manage Lists"

Step 4: Click "View/Update a List's Members"

If you want to change other information about a list, click "View/Update a List's Properties". That is where you would change the list between a mail list and some other, benign list the university surely uses for some odd purposes.

If you're making a new list, click "Create a List"
If you are indeed making a new list, make sure you click "Mail" under "Synchronized Into..." on the Properties page. Note that lists may take a few hours or even a day to update fully.
(Visit Step 7 for Properties information)

Step 5: Enter the Name of Your List

If you already have a list, you need to enter it's name in the "List Name" box and then click "Get Members"

Step 6: Edit Members As You See Fit

Your list name will be in the "List Name" box (Orange in the picture)

You can add a user by typing just the first part of their Net-ID in the "A Single Member" box and click "Add".
 - - - If you want to add an EXTERNAL user (non @iastate.edu) you may do so, but make sure to include their entire email address)
 - - - If you want to make a hierarchy of lists (for example, you want to have your sampleOwners list with the President, Vice President, and Secretary and you want them all to receive anything sent to [e-mail], but don't want to have to add/remove them from both [e-mail] AND [e-mail]) you can type LIST:sampleOwners into the "A Single Member" box. Now the members of sampleList will only get sampleList mail, but sampleOwners will get sampleList AND sampleOwners mail.

You can delete a user by clicking their name in the list of users box (Black in the picture) and then clicking the "Delete Selected Members" button. You may select more than 1 user using standard multi-select practices (Hold CTRL+click to select/deselect additional users, click, scroll to the bottom of a range, hold SHIFT+click to select a range of users)

Step 7: Final Notes/Properties

If you click "Get Properties" next to the "Get Members" button we used earlier, you'll be taken to this screen.

Here, you can change a list's name (and therefore it's email address too) by modifying the "List:" box and clicking the "Update Now" button (Brown Arrow in the picture)

You can edit it's Owner by typing "USER:<net id without @iastate.edu>" where you replace "<net id without @iastate.edu>" with the net ID you want to pass ownership to (i.e. president, not [e-mail]). Click "Update Now" to save the changes.

More easy to maintain, however, may be having a list of your executive members for the club, and then setting that this list is owned by all the people in that executive members list. (In this case, make sure to always update the list of executive members.) To do that, follow the demonstration in the picture. Type "LIST:<list name>" where you replace "<list name>" with the name of your list. Click "Update Now" to save the changes.

By using a list as the owner, when the previous owner graduates/leaves the university/suffers a horrible accident before passing the list on to the new people, you won't lose access to the list since more than one person will be "owners" of it. Set this once and forget it (just remember to update the exec/owner list!)

Finally, if you are just creating a list or for some reason want to disable the mail ability of the list, simply do so by modifying the checkbox next to "Mail" under "Synchronized Into..." (the Green arrow in the picture). Note that changes to the mail status, like changes to membership, may take a short time to go into affect. Click "Update Now" to save the changes.

Step 8: Use Your List

To use your list (assuming you turned on the "Mail" property and waited some time for it to take affect), just send emails to <yourlist>@iastate.edu, where <yourlist> is the name of the list.
See in the photo how we used [e-mail] since we named our list sampleList.

To follow best list management practices when you have a large list, you should BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) the list anytime you send an email to it. This hides the name of the list from your list members (in case they were to maliciously spam the list), and hides it from their email client (in case they click "reply-all", it won't go to everyone if you BCC).

If you have multiple people managing your group, you may want to put them in that Owner list we talked about earlier, and give out that as the email contact for your group. To make sure they get the emails you send too, put that list in the "To" field.

Finally, to send emails FROM your owner/exec list, see Gmail's How-To or your related mail provider should give documentation for that. If you do this, then all replies will be sent too your "owners" and everyone will be kept in the loop!