At Notre Dame, we offer course-related Listserv lists to our faculty.
Faculty members can use email or a web form to request these lists. In
the last 2 weeks, I have created approximately 175 course-related lists,
and I still have several outstanding requests. I have created a standard
configuration for course-related lists, but some variations from the
standard are accepted. I have written (and continue to modify) a set of
REXX/CMS PIPELINES programs that process output from the registration
system to generate a list header, an 'add' list, and a 'drop' list for
every section of every course. I pick and choose the ones I need, based
on faculty requests. I've written some additional programs to automate
the process of creating the new lists and adding/deleting subscribers
based on the 'add' and 'drop' lists. Listnames are generated based on
the course id and section number, and I have refused to change list
names on the basis that I don't want to set a precedent that will result
in a great deal of needless work. Everyone (faculty, staff, students) at
ND receives an email account when they are hired/admitted, and the list
headers and subscriber lists are built using addresses from the ND email
database. Students who want to receive list mail at any other address
must set up mail forwarding. I tried doing PH lookups in order to use
students' forwarding addresses, but decided that there was too much
overhead, so the subscriber lists now include only the students'
assigned addresses. I try to be a bit more flexible with the faculty.
When I receive a request to create a list, I do a PH lookup on the
owner. If he/she has an active forwarding address, I add owner, editor,
and subscriber entries for that address. I refresh the lists every few
days during the drop/add period. Hypothetically, they could be refreshed
daily, since the registration data file is generated daily, but I don't
have the process automated to that point yet, and there aren't enough
hours in the day for me to do it manually. Most of what I've done is
very specific to the ND environment, but I am willing to discuss it in
greater detail with anyone who is interested.

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* Paul Russell * Senior Systems Engineer * University of Notre Dame * *
Email: [log in to unmask] * Web: http://vma.cc.nd.edu/~prussell * *
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