Sagamore PTA discussion groups

This page concerns the discussion groups powered by Google Groups (provided by the Sagamore Hills PTA Google account), and shouldn't be confused with the other Sagamore discussion lists privided by Parents.

Most email should be sent to an appropriate Sagamore group instead of specific people (or at least always CC a group too). Everyone decides how "plugged-in" to a group they want to be: completely ignore, browse past conversations on the web, subscribe to receive weekly or daily digests by email, or subscribe to receive every message. Anyone can email a (non-announcement) group, but messages from non-subscribers are moderated (I can moderate more heavily if need be).

See the Sagamore Hills Elementary Schoo PTA Google Groups for a list of current groups. The first group was created 2014-05-06 for the garden,

See also: Sagamore email

Adding members

Sign into the Sagamore Google Groups as sagamorehillspta@sagamorehillspta.org and goto:

Group settings → Members → Direct add members

Folks may also add themselves to a group by emailing:

GroupID+subscribe@groups.sagamorehillspta.org

For example, emailing grounds+subscribe@groups.sagamorehillspta.org .

Creating a new group

There are actually 2 ways to create a group—we're going to do it through the Groups interface instead of the Admin panel.

All groups will start with communications@sagamorehillspt.org as an "owner" (for moderation notices) and sagamorehillspta.org@sagamorehillspta.org as a "manager" so they can add/remove group members (sagamorehillspta@sagamorehillspta.org will not receive notices because is not an email address).

1. • Be sure you're signed in as communications@sagamorehillspta.org (sagamorehillspta@sagamorehillspta.org and others will not work (admin@sagamorehillspta.org will work, but then we'd just need to remove it as the default group owner))
   • Go to Sagamore Hills PTA's Google Groups
2. Create group (red button at top)
3. Be sure of the following:

   Group name

   No commas because they don't get escaped and munge email addresses (Google Groups bug!)

   eg "Garden discussion at Sagamore Hills Elementary School"

   Group email address

   @groups.sagamorehillspta.org

   Group description

   eg "Discuss garden efforts at Sagamore Hills Elementary School"

   Select a group type

   Email list

   View topics, Post, & Join the group

   Public

4. Then, in the group's settings:

   Don't force using Google Accounts

   Settings → Identity → Required forms of identity → Display names only

   Non-member messages are moderated

   Settings → Moderation → Moderate messages → Moderate messages from non-members of the group.

   Setting → Email options

   Add a subject prefix

   Subject prefix → [groupname]

   Modify the email footer

   Email footer

   Select only:

   • Display how to post to this group by email.
   • Display how to unsubscribe from this group by email.
   • Add custom footer text.

     http://sagamorehillspta.org/page-for-group

   Change where replies are sent

   Post replies → To the author of the message only

   Necessitates reply'ing-to-all to include the group, but otherwise, can't reply to original sender (who might not be a subscriber)

5. Add sagamorehillspta@sagamorehillspta.org as a manager so they can add/remove members (but they don't get notices because sagamorehillspta@sagamorehillspta.org is not an email address) and don't let them post
   1. Group settings → Members → Direct add members

      Enter email addresses to add as members

      sagamorehillspta@sagamorehillspta.org

   2. Members → All members

      Without using the checkbox, click on the entry for sagamorehillspta@sagamorehillspta.org

      Role

      Manager

      Email delivery

      No email: web-only participation

      Posting permission

      Override: member is not allowed to post