The directors email should really be for things that require their attention, perhaps to deal with private discussions for example.
@systems has an email for our various accounts so we can reset passwords and get notifications.
What isn’t covered by this is the relatively decent number of emails that are enquiries from new and potential members, opportunities, events, and what not.
It was a half had conversation previously that we’d add for about £33 a year a general email account that group of members could handle, initially I would imagine @welcome, @directors and myself could help with this, but others could probably be brought in if needed.
The idea being I’ve noticed a couple of times lately that people have said they’ve not gotten a reply from directors about general enquiries which didn’t really require a director to reply because they are busy, and more hands makes light work.
ild like to echo your message, with my own variation.
i think the directors@southlondon… email is a bit odd.
well not the email address but how we are currently using it.
I think we should have the following standard type emails and ones that apply to us.
Each one could be set up to target specific people or could be setup to go to multiple addresses or whatever we want.
The directors@southlondonmakerspace.org could be cc on all if we want. Directors@southlondonmakerspace.org email address could then be used for directors stuff like xyz.
I think this would promote responsibility and ownership of areas.
These accounts could be set up to CC or BC or just pass on to who ever we want.
We use Google Apps because it’s very good and hassle free.
However we can forward and catch all emails if we want no problems.
It will also be a non issue if we go for Charity status.
I think too many emails might be a bad idea, but I think we could certainly create a new members mailbox which has a bunch of filtering rules to put things sent to electronics to the electronics folder automagically, while catch all emails go to the main inbox?
the email address on the isp can forward to whatever address you want including google apps.
you would still be able to use this in exactly the same way you would just have more transparent address from the outside. for example if we wanted to we could set up all emails to go to directors@ if we wanted to. but from the outside people using the website, new people, people making enquiries, press, blah blah would have a more familir address to send to.
how does that address only having directors @ as the only email address we have? maybe its not an issue but it would be my preference.
dont understand the relevance of this. pls explain.
too many emails would be a bad idea. well thought out useful ones would be a good idea. if we wanted to.
in essence im just voicing my opinion.
i think there are two sub topics here. i dont think they are linked technically.
1 how we deal with email behind the scenes.
2. how we deal with emails in the front end.
my personal opinion is that just one email address (at the front end no matter how we filter it) isnt as xyz as it could be.
i think theres technical solutions to improving this, but only if it is well thought out and indeed wanted.
I’m saying we could easily get more email addresses that we could use without paying £33 each and not effecting the current backend system - unless we wanted to, which you seem to be voicing a wish for in this thread.
i listed a number of email addresses for example in privious replies.
I think it’s worth debating (the number of additional email accounts I mean). Not neccesarily off topic.
Personally, I think one is enough, because more often than not emails have cross-disciplinary topics. Also just from an admin point of view, managing permissions for a dozen email accounts isn’t much fun!
Yeah. Let’s keep it simple, and in one place. So far I really don’t think there’s been an issue. And we’ve discussed this at some length already on a previous thread.
Something like enquiries@ or hello@ might be friendlier/more appropriate than directors@ ? I get that now. And implementing them to all go to directors@ is free (i believe?) and keeps it all in one place, which is definitely manageable at our current scale, and avoids stuff falling through the cracks.
To put it in perspective: we only get about 3 emails per day, if that. Directing people towards looking on or posting on Discourse is our standard approach if the email warrants it, and this funnels people into our online community where it usually reaches the right members.
In the spirit of Governancegate, it would be good to delegate email powers to a wider group of people, both for receiving and sending. Keep directors@ for Directors Serious Business.