LIST Module
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- The CommuniGate Pro LIST module implements the mailing list mechanism. It also implements mail distribution to Groups.
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LIST Module |
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The system administrator can create one or several mailing lists. Users from the same or any other mail system can subscribe to these mailing lists using the Web interface or by sending E-mail. They can post messages on mailing lists by sending E-mail to the list addresses, and posted messages are delivered to all subscribers. All posted messages are stored in the mailing list mailbox that serves as an archive.
If a user subscribes in the FEED mode, all posted messages are redirected to that user immediately after they are received by the LIST module.
When a user subscribes in the DIGEST mode, the user starts to receive list digests: a multi-part messages generated with the LIST module for each mailing list. Each digest message contains all messages posted on the list since the last digest was generated, prefixed with an index of these messages.
When a user subscribes in the INDEX mode, the user starts to receive messages containing the indexes of newly posted messages. If the user wants to read some of the posted messages, they can use a Web browser to access the mailing list archive.
This table shows all mailing lists created. By following the links in the table, you can open an individual list setup page, the Domain Settings page for the list domain, or the Account Settings page for the mailing list owner.
Each Mailing List is created inside the main or one of the secondary Domains, and each Mailing List belongs to its owner - an Account in the same Domain.
To create a Mailing List, create an Account or choose an existing one - the List owner Account. Open the Account Settings page, enter the name of the Mailing List to create and click the New List button.
The Server checks that there is no Account, Group, Forwarder or Mailing List with the same name in the same Domain, and creates a new Mailing List.
Several mailboxes are created in the list owner Account:
| listname | this mailbox is the mailing list archive: it contains the messages posted on the mailing list |
| listname/requests | this mailbox contains the messages with subscription requests |
| listname/reports | this mailbox contains bounce and other DSN (Delivery Status Notification) messages generated for the messages distributed via this mailing list. |
| listname/approval | this mailbox contains postings that require the list owner approval (moderated
postings). To post these messages, the list owner should redirect them back to the mailing list using a secure submit method: the CommuniGate Pro Web User Interface, the XTND XMIT POP3 method, a local "mail" command, the PIPE module, etc. |
To configure a Mailing List, open the Mailing List Settings page. You should select a link to the Settings page either from the list of all mailing lists located in the LIST module Settings page, or from the list owner Account Settings page.
You should have the All Accounts and Domains or the Domain Administrator access right in order to open the Mailing List Settings pages via the WebAdmin Interface.
In order to modify a Mailing List settings or subscriber lists, the Domain Administrator should have the CanAccessLists access right.
The list owners can access the Mailing List settings pages using the WebUser Interface with their Accounts. The WebUser session page listing mailboxes/folders also provides links to the Account Mailing Lists pages
The Verify Owner setting specifies the additional checks to be made:
The Settings page contains a set of options, settings, and text areas that controls the subscription, postings, message distribution, and bounce processing. See the sections below for the details.
To rename a mailing list, open that list Settings page via the System Administrator Web interface (see above).
You should have the All Accounts and Domains or the Domain Administrator access right in order to open the Mailing List Settings pages.
Enter the new name for the list in the Mailing List Settings page, and click the Rename button. The Server checks if there is no Account or Mailing List with the new name in the same Domain and renames the mailing list. Then the Mailing List Settings page is reopened.
To remove a mailing list, open that list Settings page via the System Administrator Web interface (see above).
Click the Remove List button. A confirmation page appears. If you click the Remove button on the confirmation page, the list is removed, the files with the list subscribers and list settings are deleted, and the mailing list mailboxes are removed from the list owner Account.
The following symbol combinations can be used:
| Where | Combination | Substituted with |
|---|---|---|
| All Texts | ^N | the listname string |
| ^D | the domain string | |
| ^E | the Description setting | |
| Digest Subject, Header, Trailer | ^X | the sequence number of the current digest |
| Feed Subject Prefix, Header, Trailer | ^B | the sequence number of the current message |
If there is a number after a special symbol combination (as in ^N80), the number specifies the maximum length of the substitution string. If a substitution is longer than specified, its last symbols are cut off.
If there is a number after a special string combination, and the number starts with 0, as in ^N040, the number specifies the length of the substitution string. If a substitution string is longer than specified, its last symbols are cut off, and if a string is shorter than specified, space symbols are added to the beginning of the string.
Each mailing list is a list of subscribers, i.e. a list of E-mail addresses receiving messages posted on the mailing list.
In order to subscribe, unsubscribe, and change their subscription mode via E-mail, users of the listname@domain mailing list should send any message to the following addresses:
| Send to address: | New user | Existing subscriber |
|---|---|---|
| listname-on@domain or listname-subscribe@domain |
to subscribe to the list in the default mode | to confirm the current subscription mode |
| listname-feed@domain | to subscribe to the list in the FEED mode | to change the subscription mode to FEED |
| listname-digest@domain | to subscribe to the list in the DIGEST mode | to change the subscription mode to DIGEST |
| listname-index@domain | to subscribe to the list in the INDEX mode | to change the subscription mode to INDEX |
| listname-null@domain | to subscribe to the list in the NULL mode | to change the subscription mode to NULL |
| listname-off@domain or listname-unsubscribe@domain |
to unsubscribe from the list | |
| listname-confirm@domain | to get the confirmation ID; this ID can be used as the password for other subscription operations and for list archive browsing |
When subscription request messages are sent to these addresses, the message From: header fields are used as requesters E-mail addresses.
You can specify who can subscribe to the mailing list, and how they should subscribe.
| nobody | users cannot subscribe to this mailing list and/or change the subscription mode by themselves. Only the system administrator and the list owner can do these operations. Users still can unsubscribe by themselves. |
| this domain only | only users from the mailing list domain can subscribe. |
| locals Only | only users registered with this server can subscribe. |
| anybody | any user on any system can subscribe to this list. |
| moderated | all subscription requests will be stored in the listname/requests mailbox (see below) and should be approved by the list owner. The List owner should redirect these requests to the listname-on, listname-feed and other addresses to subscribe new users and to let them change the subscription mode. Users still can unsubscribe by themselves. When user requests are stored in the listname/requests mailbox for approval, they are "flagged" (get the Flag marker). |
All stored request messages get the X-List-Report additional header field . This field contains the list manager report (Delivery Status Notification message). It is recommended that the List owners configure their mailer applications so they display the X-List-Report fields.
Each list user (E-mail address) is subscribed in one of the following modes:
You can use this method to make it impossible for certain users to subscribe to your mailing lists, though usually the more generic anti-spam and other system-wide protection methods should be used.
There are several very common problems with most of publicly available mailing lists:
These and some other problems can be solved using confirmation requests.
| Combination | Substituted with |
|---|---|
| ^O | the requested operation |
| ^P | unsubscribe for the unsubscribe and subscribe operations and subscribe(operation) for other operations |
| ^A | the subscriber address |
| ^I | the confirmation identifier |
When a new user is subscribed, the Policy Text message is sent to that new user. When a user unsubscribes, the Good Bye message is sent.
Besides the generic "symbol combinations",
these service texts can also contain the following combinations:
| Combination | Substituted with |
|---|---|
| ^A | the subscriber address |
| ^I | the confirmation identifier |
To post a message on the mailing list, the author should send it to the listname@domain address.
| from owner only | Only messages submitted by the list owner (using any secure method) will be posted | |
| moderated | Messages from everybody but the list owner are redirected to the list owner for approval; if the list owner
redirects a message back to the list, the message is posted.
Note: this mode can be used to change the list posting policy when the list owner wants to postpone all postings. If you use the from subscribers mode, the New Subscribers setting (see below) provides more advanced moderation options. |
|
| from subscribers | Messages from the list subscribers are accepted for posting; some messages can be moderated (see below). | |
| moderate guests | Messages from the list subscribers are accepted for posting; some messages can be moderated (see below). Messages from addresses that are not subscribed are moderated. | |
| from anybody | Messages from any address are accepted for posting. |
| plain text only | only messages in the text/plain format can be posted | |
| text only | only messages in the text (text/plain, text/html, etc.) formats can be posted | |
| text alternative | only messages in the text format or multipart/alternative messages that contain a part in the text format can be posted (for example, a message can contain a text/html part and the same text as a image/gif part/variant) | |
| anything | messages in any MIME format can be posted |
| Combination | Substituted with |
|---|---|
| ^N | the listname string |
| ^D | the domain string |
| ^P | the first HTTP User module port |
| ^R | the http or the https string, depending on the type of the first HTTP User module port |
You can specify additional header fields to be copied from original postings to the messages sent to subscribers - directly or as parts of digests.
If you want to copy all header fields, enter the asterisk (*) sign into the first field.
If the To And Cc option is set to:
All messages sent to subscribers (in all modes) have message envelope information that routes all error reports back to the LIST module. When a report is received, the LIST module:
Most of the problems can be detected immediately when sending a list message from the CommuniGate Pro Server, so most of the error reports are generated locally, on the same CommuniGate Pro server. The CommuniGate Pro server generates reports in the proper format, so most of the delivery problems are handled automatically.
If a list message has been sent to a remote site without a problem, but then that remote site fails to deliver the message to the recipient, the delivery report is generated on that remote site. Most of the modern mail servers generate delivery reports in the correct format, so in this case many problems are handled automatically, too.
And, finally, it is still possible to receive unformatted delivery reports from other sites. The LIST module can store those unformatted reports in the listname/reports mailbox, so the list owner can process them manually.
Each record in the delivery report contains information about one E-mail address, and indicates if the original message was or was not delivered to that address. It can also specify if the delivery problem is fatal (as when account is removed from the system), or if it is a non-fatal, temporary problem (as when a remote site is down or when the account disk space quota is exceeded).
If a non-fatal report is received, the E-mail address in question is suspended, and no list messages are sent to that address, and all additional error reports about that address are ignored. When the LIST module performs periodic list clean-ups, it sends a warning message to all suspended addresses. The warning message notifies that user that some list messages have not been delivered to the user address, and it also asks the user to confirm subscription (by replying to the warning message).
There are two ways to specify the suspension period:
When a user confirms the subscription by replying to the warning message, the suspension period ends, and the bounce counter associated with the user E-mail address is cleared.
| Combination | Substituted with |
|---|---|
| ^A | the subscriber address |
| ^I | the confirmation identifier |
The To header field of a distributed message contains the mailing list address. The From, Date, and Message-ID fields (and specified additional fields) are copied from the original posting.
The body of the distributed message is a copy of the original message body. If the original message was not in the MIME format, or if it was in the MIME text/plain or multipart/mixed format (the most common formats), the FEED Mode Header text is inserted before and the FEED Mode Trailer text is inserted after the body of the original posting.
Sample:
| the Subject Prefix setting | [R&D] |
| a posted message | Subject: test |
| the distributed message | Subject: [R&D] test |
| the posted reply | Subject: Re: [R&D] test |
| the distributed reply (insert after Reply Prefix is not selected) |
Subject: [R&D] Re: test |
| the distributed reply (insert after Reply Prefix is selected) |
Subject: Re: [R&D] test |
| the composed digest | 1) test 2) Re: test |
Posted messages can be stored in a mailbox created in the list owner Account. Such a mailbox is used to collect messages for message digests. If messages are not removed from that mailbox after a digest is created, this mailbox can be used as a mailing list archive.
Select the Enabled value for the Digesting and Archiving option and follow the link next to that setting to modify the Digesting and Archiving settings.
A digest message contains a set of the messages posted on the mailing list since the time when the previous digest was composed.
A digest message body contains the digest header, the table of contents (TOC) listing all the messages in the digest, the TOC trailer, the posted messages, and the digest trailer.
A list index message contains the same digest header, TOC, and TOC trailer, but it does not contain the posted messages themselves and it does not contain the digest trailer.
List index messages are created at the same time the list digest messages are created. Digest messages are sent to the digest-mode subscribers, and index messages are sent to the index-mode subscribers.
Note:if the Generate Every setting value is not more than 1 day, every day
the first digest is generated at the specified time. If this setting is set to 4:00,
the Generate Every setting is set to 1 Day, and the last digest was generated at 23:00 on
Monday, the next digest will be generated at 4:00 on Tuesday.
If the the Generate Every setting value is set to N days (N>1), the first digest is
generated at the specified time N days later: if this setting is set to 4:00,
the Generate Every setting is set to 5 Days, and the last digest was generated at 23:00
on Monday, the next digest will be generated at 4:00 on Friday.
| Combination | Substituted with |
|---|---|
| ^X | the message sequence number in the digest being composed |
| ^F | the From header field of the message |
| ^T | the Date header field of the message |
| ^S | the Subject header field of the message |
| ^I | the Message-Id header of the message |
Each time after a digest is composed, the mailbox is checked and the oldest posted messages are removed to keep the archive mailbox size within the specified limits.
If the subscriber (E-mail address) is a local CommuniGate Pro Account, then not only the confirmation ID, but also the Account password can be used as the list access password.
The Subscribers page contains the list of all E-mail addresses subscribed to the mailing list. For each address additional information (such as the subscriber's real name, number of bounces from this address, etc.) is listed. Each address can be marked, and you can use the Mark All button to mark all list subscribers. You can use the Filter field to display the subscribers with matching addresses only.
You can manually add subscribers to the list. Enter the new subscriber E-mail address press the Subscribe button.
Click the Subscribe button to subscribe the specified address.
You can use text files with E-mail addresses to add subscribers to mailing lists. Open the Subscribers page, and use the Import control to select a file with E-mail addresses. Click the Subscribe button to add the addresses to the mailing list.
The text file should have one E-mail address per line, with several optional fields on each line. If a line contains several fields, they should be separated with the tabulation (TAB) symbol.
The Mailing List manager checks the file format first. If the file format is incorrect, no new user is subscribed. This allows you to fix the file format and to try the same file: either all addresses are added, or none is added.
Note: The import file must be prepared on the client computer (on the computer you use to run your browser). The browser allows you to upload files from disks connected to that computer, not to the CommuniGate Pro Server computer.
Note: When using Netscape and some other Unix browsers, make sure that the file name ends with the .txt suffix - otherwise the browser won't upload the file as a text one, and the file will be ignored.
Note: Some versions of the Netscape® browser for "classic" MacOS® do not convert the MacOS text files (that use the CR symbol as the line separator) into CR-LF delimited text files. You may see the "format error" messages if you try to import a subscriber list from a MacOS computer using that browser. You should either use a different browser, or you should convert the subscriber list into a CR-LF delimited text file before importing it with that browser.
Note: If you are moving users from a different mailing list system, make sure you have set the Feedback option to Silently - otherwise all inserted subscribers will receive confirmation requests and/or Welcome messages.
You may want to subscribe List1 to List2, so all messages posted on the List2 list are sent to the List1 subscribers, too.
After you have added the qualified address of the List1 (list1@domain1.dom) to the List2 subscribers list, add the qualified address of the List2 (list2@domain2.dom) to the List1 susbcribers list. Set the subscription mode to null, so messages will not go back to the List2 list, and set the posting mode to special, so messages from List2 (which are auto-generated list messages) will be allowed for posting on List1.
All commands sent to the above address apply to the mailing lists in the specified domain only (to the virtual list server in that domain).
The messages with the List Server commands should be in the plain text format, or in the mulitpart/alternative format containing a part in the plain text format.
Each List Server command is stored on one text line. Line starting with the %, *, #, and ; symbols are not processed (comment lines).
The following commands are supported:
Messages to these addresses are processed as submissions to the specified mailing lists.
The LIST module detects addresses in the form
listname-request@domain and listname-admin@domain
or
listname-request and listname-admin.
Messages sent to these addresses are rerouted to the mailing list owner.
The LIST module also routes to itself the following addresses:
listname-xxx@domain
and
listname-xxx.
The xxx suffix can be one of the following:
| suffix | Action |
|---|---|
| on, off, subscribe, unsubscribe, feed, digest, index | messages sent to these addresses are processed as subscription requests. |
| report | messages sent to these addresses are processed as delivery reports about the distributed messages |
| anything else | messages are rejected |