Exchange distribution groups

[mrbios]

We have lots of distribution groups, one for all students, all staff, each year group etc etc

 

Lately students have realised they can email these groups with stupid pictures so we need to lock it down a bit but it's proving more confusing than i first thought.

 

We need teachers to be able to email the All students group but disallow students from being able to email to any groups, but at the same time still be able to recieve from them.

 

I can see all the "accept messages from" settings, and that's fine as i want them to accept emails from everyone, but i need to be able to setup similar settings for outgoing emails, where do i do this? (please don't tell me on individual accounts or i'll cry)

 

Can anyone help me on this pretty please with a cherry on top?

[SC-UK]

There are two ways of doing this. You can either restrict the groups so that the students will not be able to acess them in the address book. OR, you can set a policy on the student accounts to only let them send an e-mail to 1,2,3, or whatever, people at a time.

 

Hopefully somebody can provide more detail on these methods as it's a while since I've used Exchange 2003, and don't want to advise you incorrectly.

 

Tom

[mrbios]

OR, you can set a policy on the student accounts to only let them send an e-mail to 1,2,3, or whatever, people at a time.

 

Hopefully somebody can provide more detail on these methods as it's a while since I've used Exchange 2003, and don't want to advise you incorrectly.

 

Tom

 

That sounds EXACTLY like what we're after, anyone enlighten me on this?

[Edu-IT]

Isn't there also a way to make it so that only certain people can email the address? I'm sure there is. You could then just add staff to this.

[jamesreedersmith]

The only accept mail from is the bit you need to use - put all staff in that box and set it so that they are the only ones permitted to send to that email address.

 

Thanks

James

[SC-UK]

Surely the "only accept from" option would prevent the students from ever e-mailing staff. This would stop the random group e-mails, but also stop genuine student to staff contact.

 

This may be completely wrong as I have nothing to check it with here - BUT - go into the security settings in Exchange Manager of the distribution group that contains your staff e-mail addresses. Deny the students access to it.

 

This will mean that students will still be able to send an e-mail to "[email protected]", but will not be able to see the whole distribution group and send a group e-mail to every member of it.

 

Tom

[jamesreedersmith]

The only accept emails from is set on a per distribution list basis and therfore only affects the students sending to that list (you can set it per user if you have a nucisance emailer etc) but its mainly used for groups as in this situation.

 

Your suggestion is the server way of achieving the same goal.

[Edu-IT]

Surely the "only accept from" option would prevent the students from ever e-mailing staff. This would stop the random group e-mails, but also stop genuine student to staff contact.

 

This may be completely wrong as I have nothing to check it with here - BUT - go into the security settings in Exchange Manager of the distribution group that contains your staff e-mail addresses. Deny the students access to it.

 

This will mean that students will still be able to send an e-mail to "[email protected]", but will not be able to see the whole distribution group and send a group e-mail to every member of it.

 

Tom

No because you would be setting it for the distribution group email address and not the staff members email?

[SC-UK]

I may have got confused by this a little bit now!

 

Are we trying to stop the students from viewing the distribution lists in the address book OR stop them from e-mailing members of staff etc?

[jamesreedersmith]

I believe he is trying to stop students emailing the distribution lists but still allowing direct emails to specific teachers.

[SC-UK]

Then surely my suggestion would work? Setting deny security on the distribution list for students will stop it showing up in the address book for them BUT they will still be able to send an e-mail to individual members of staff?

[Edu-IT]

Then surely my suggestion would work? Setting deny security on the distribution list for students will stop it showing up in the address book for them BUT they will still be able to send an e-mail to individual members of staff?

Hiding it from the address book won't solve it if the kids know the address though. I'd go for the 'deny mail except from XYZ'.

[SC-UK]

Very true :-)

 

I need to wake up a bit lol

[jamesreedersmith]

Just to add - if you make sure you put a staff group in there rather than individual staff saves having to add new staff manually each time - just add them to the group and bobs your uncle.

[mrbios]

I believe he is trying to stop students emailing the distribution lists but still allowing direct emails to specific teachers.

 

^ this is correct, at the moment i'm looking at the SMTP Virtual server, i'm trying to create another one to assign the students to so i can limit the maximum number of recipients to 1

 

Not sure how well this is going to work yet though, and i think while it'll stop kids from emailing the masses occasionally it won't stop them from emailing the distribution groups

[mb2k01]

^ this is correct, at the moment i'm looking at the SMTP Virtual server, i'm trying to create another one to assign the students to so i can limit the maximum number of recipients to 1

 

Not sure how well this is going to work yet though, and i think while it'll stop kids from emailing the masses occasionally it won't stop them from emailing the distribution groups

 

That is a bit overkill for the problem you've described.

The solution above using message restrictions / accept message "only from" is quicker, easier and probably more effective.

 

You could easily set a per user max recipients rule up in Exchange / AD using the delivery options button in the Exchange General tab of a users properties (you could do that by batch by using ADModify)

[maniac]

As other people have said, within Active Directory look at the 'Exchange General' properties for the Distribution List, and set it so only staff can send to it.

 

We do that here to stop the students e-mailing any of the distribution lists we have, like the all students and all staff lists and it works a treat.

 

Mike.

[Geoff]

I don't like using technical measures for this sort of issue. Really I've found the best way to deal with this sort of misuse is to punish the students who are doing it rather than cripple the email system with sender restrictions. The students will be quite easy to track down in this case too, as they have helpfully provided their email addresses.

[mb2k01]

I don't like using technical measures for this sort of issue. Really I've found the best way to deal with this sort of misuse is to punish the students who are doing it rather than cripple the email system with sender restrictions. The students will be quite easy to track down in this case too, as they have helpfully provided their email addresses.

 

It's good to have a mix of both really.

If a distribution list only contains pupils then pupil-pupil messaging can be dealt with like this, but if it is pupils messaging a staff / governor / external list then it is more of an administrative safeguard.

[mrbios]

I don't like using technical measures for this sort of issue. Really I've found the best way to deal with this sort of misuse is to punish the students who are doing it rather than cripple the email system with sender restrictions. The students will be quite easy to track down in this case too, as they have helpfully provided their email addresses.

 

That's our prefered option, but this abuse of the system has been going on for 2 weeks now and SLT seem to be useless in fixing it, they punish the individual but don't make an example of them infront of others, so then the next kid does it, rinse, repeat

[Geoff]

It's good to have a mix of both really.

If a distribution list only contains pupils then pupil-pupil messaging can be dealt with like this, but if it is pupils messaging a staff / governor / external list then it is more of an administrative safeguard.

 

I do see your point, but there are valid reasons for pupils contacting staff via email. Especially when it's Teacher <-> Pupil.

[mrbios]

You could easily set a per user max recipients rule up in Exchange / AD using the delivery options button in the Exchange General tab of a users properties (you could do that by batch by using ADModify)

 

This did the trick, surprised i hadn't heard of ADmodify before, what a wonderful piece of software!

[mb2k01]

I do see your point, but there are valid reasons for pupils contacting staff via email. Especially when it's Teacher <-> Pupil.

 

We were talking about preventing mail being sent to a distribution list, not of emailing individual staff.

 

If a user is prevented from being able to send to a distribution list it doesn't mean they are then prevented from emailing the members of that list individually.

 

The max recipients mention only limits the amount of people a user is able to send to (to stop them selecting 30 users at a time etc)