Faculty Meeting Follow-Up: Question about Emailing through SIS

In one of the facutly meetings last week, one of you asked about the function in PeopleSoft where you can email (really, send an email notification to) your class. The question was whether this tool works or not. I've checked in with our PeopleSoft gurus to find out some information for you.

Although this function did not work when we first went to PeopleSoft, it does work now. You can select who you want to email, or can send your message to the whole class. As you consider using it, here are some things to be aware of and consider:

• Although a student's VCCS email is supposed to be the default email address, we have found some cases where it is not. So, you may be sending your message to a non-VCCS email for some students using this function.
• If a student has never logged into her VCCS email account, her email address may not show up at all in your roster. However, you could add her address manually before sending out your message.
• When you use this feature, your own email address goes into the "To" line, and all the students' email addresses go into "Bcc." This means students can only reply to you, not reply to all other students.

Of course, you can also email all your students using the Blackboard email function.