UT Lists
Mailing lists are forums for teaching, collaboration, discussion, entertainment, announcements, and more.
With UT Lists, messages are sent directly to subscribers and are read with email programs, such as Outlook or Thunderbird. Discussions on mailing lists are usually closed among subscribers.
Anyone with an accessible email address can subscribe to a university mailing list, including individuals outside of the university or UT System. However, only individuals with email addresses that end in "utexas.edu" can be mailing list owners.
Web interface to subscribe, create, and manage mailing lists
Several different language options for the user interface
UT Lists mailing lists are available at no cost to UT students, faculty, and staff
Key Metrics
- Availability: 99.9%
- GUI Response: 10 seconds
- Message delivery: 10 minutes
- Routine work request acknowledgment response time: 1 business day
- Review and response to pending open requests: 5 business days
Overview
This document defines the service level objectives for UT Lists.
Service description
Mailing lists are used for teaching, collaboration, discussion, entertainment, announcements, and more. E-mail messages sent to a list are delivered directly to subscribers and are read with e-mail programs, such as Outlook or Thunderbird. The Web-based user interface allows users to create mailing lists, subscribe to lists, and otherwise manage their relationship with UT Lists.
UT Lists uses the Sympa mailing list manager software to manage mailing lists and deliver messages to subscribers. Sympa has internal subsystems devoted to mail distribution, mail archiving and bounce management. Incoming and outgoing mail is delivered using the campus IronPort mail appliances managed by ITS.
Intended users
Students, faculty, staff, and anyone outside of the campus community can subscribe to a mailing list, as long as the list owner approves the subscription.
At least one list owner must be a member of the campus community whose email address ends in utexas.edu.
Supported computing environment
The minimum recommended browsers are specified by the university's Web Guidelines.
In addition, UT Lists requires:
Use of the UT Lists Web interface requires browser support for Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and JavaScript to be enabled.Messages distributed through UT Lists contain standard Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) message headers. User mail readers must support MIME headers in order for messages distributed by UT Lists to be correctly formatted.
Technical support
Both Tier 1 and Tier 2 technical support is available during normal business hours. Routine requests are typically addressed within one business day.
Tier 1
List owners are responsible for assisting subscribers with everyday subscription requests and questions. Questions that cannot be addressed by list owners should be directed to Tier 1 technical support. Any user can call the UT Service Desk at 512-475-9400.
Tier 2
Departmental support staff and the UT Service Desk may escalate issues to Tier 2.
Maintenance
ITS will notify customers about both scheduled and unscheduled maintenance using the Alerts and Outages page of service availability and service delivery issues. Services may not be available during the maintenance periods.
Scheduled maintenance occurs on Wednesday evenings from 8 to 10 p.m. on a weekly basis. See the ITS events calendar for specific dates. To the maximum extent possible, installation of service, application, and security updates will be performed during scheduled maintenance.
Unscheduled maintenance tasks that require service downtime will be announced as soon as possible on the Alerts and Outages page.
Change notification: ITS will notify customers using the Alerts and Outages page of service availability and service delivery issues for UT Lists.
Account retention
Lists that have been inactive for 380 days will be closed automatically. To reactivate an inactive list, simply send a message to the list to indicate activity.
Closed lists will be purged and removed 90 days after the date they were closed. To reactivate a closed list, send an email request to the ITS Service Desk at help@its.utexas.edu.
Archive storage limits
Mailing list archives are limited to 1GB in total size, including HTML versions of messages and associated index metadata.
Archive retention period
The retention period for UT Lists archives is 4 years (48 months). This interval is based on guidance from the university Records Management Officer for compliance with the minimum retention required by university records management policies.
List owners are encouraged to periodically review their existing list archives and preserve or delete any monthly archives that are near the 4 year retention period limit. See KB Article KB00122212 for information on how to review, download or delete list archives.
Password security reminder
Due to its focus on enabling collaboration with off-campus subscribers, UT Lists uses an internal authentication system that does not require an identity within the UT EID System. Your UT EID password is not required to use UT Lists. As a security precaution to limit the chance of exposure, do not use your UT EID password with your UT Lists account.
User responsibilities
Subscribers (users) of the service and identified owners/administrators agree to be aware of and adhere to the university's Acceptable Use Policy.
Users agree to comply with the data classification standards set by the UT Austin Information Security Office for storing and publishing CONTROLLED category data (historically referred to as Category II) per the ISO Data Classification Standard.
UT Lists users agree not to send CONFIDENTIAL (formerly known as Category I) category data via UT Lists mailing lists.
UT Lists subscribers agree to:
- Be aware of user support documentation on this page
- Cooperate with ITS representatives during problem diagnosis
In addition to the items listed above, list owners agree to:
- Respond to routine subscriber requests as needed