Google Groups
Collaboration beyond email
Allow group to reserve rooms (does require that the room is set up as a Google Resource)
Membership options
manual groups, self-management
Note that OEC can also update group membership based on a list that you provide - this can be useful especially if you have a lot of changes to make
Incoming Message Restrictions/Moderation
Google provides several ways to control how a Group will process an incoming message:
Restriction: Who can post (anyone, only ucsd.edu accounts, only members, only managers)
Moderation: Whose messages are moderated (all messages, messages from non-members, no moderation)
Pending Messages queue: Moderators can Approve, Deny message or Approve/Ban author
IMPORTANT: Approve author option: proceed with caution
Once a message has been sent and is in the Pending Messages queue: Moderators can choose to "Approve author".
This option will automatically approve all incoming messages from the sender in the future
This option cannot be backed out of without recreating the group from scratch
Big Caution 1: Accidental Emails to group
OEC has seen several cases of emails accidentally sent to a group by an Approved author, which is then sent to the group members without first being moderated. There is no way to pull the email back at that point.
Big Caution 2 with example: Verify what you are Approving
topgroup@ucsd.edu contains topgroup2@ucsd.edu as a member (called a nested group).
oec@ucsd.edu sends an email to topgroup@ucsd.edu, and this message is then delivered to topgroup2@ucsd.edu.
The moderator of topgroup2@ucsd.edu has the email from oec@ucsd.edu in Pending Messages and chooses to "Approve author" so they won't have to moderate future messages from oec@ucsd.edu
The moderator has actually automatically approved all emails sent through topgroup@ucsd.edu - as opposed to automatically approving emails sent from oec@ucsd.edu.