Parents emailing staff

[steveg]

We've decided that it would be useful if parents could email staff directly. We dont want to give out each staff member's actual email address so we're going to create a second address for each staff member along the lines of teacher4a@school..... etc.

 

We use exchange 2003 for email, and don't want each teacher to have more than 1 mailbox, as its hard enough getting them to check one, so I was going to add the new email address to the same email box. Now the problem comes when a teacher replies to an email they have recieved from a parent, they will reveal their actual address. (we want to leave this as the default from address for all other communication)

 

In the same way that you can send on behalf of someone else, is it possible to pick in outlook which of your email addresses shows as the return address on an email by email basis?

 

Any other ideas gratefully recieved!

 

Steve

[SpuffMonkey]

If you're giving an aliased account to every teacher....why not just give out the real address?

[srochford]

I can't really see the point in setting up aliases like this except when you want them for roles (so you could have head_year7, head_year8 etc)

 

Why don't you want parents to know the "real" email? Is this a worry that some bozo will start spamming them and you'd just remove the alias? That would work but you'd then have to let all the other parents know the new alias and the problem would just start again!

[steveg]

The main reason is it will be a trial for this school year, so if it doesn't work we just delete the aliases.

 

Steve

[srochford]

OK; sounds reasonable.

 

I don't think you can reply with an alias - only with an alternative mailbox and people will get it wrong.

 

What about having a web form - you pick "Mr Bloggs" from the list, fill in the box and hit send. The webserver then sends the email. If it doesn't work out then you just shut down the web site.

 

If you want to avoid spam, you can easily add a simple captcha system.

[EduTech]

What you could do i suppose is setup groups? So English goes to English Teachers etc

 

James.

[FN-GM]

you could send them to the general e-mail address then let the person who looks after that forward them on

[6Foot2]

you could send them to the general e-mail address then let the person who looks after that forward them on

 

This is what we currently do. The E-Mails come into [email protected]

 

They are then forwarded by the nominate person for the day [usually the Receptionist]

 

We moved away from shared departmental/faculty mailboxes because they were not checked and parents were not getting replies to E-Mails sent in [sometimes mail went unchecked for weeks on end!]

[Sylv3r]

you could send them to the general e-mail address then let the person who looks after that forward them on

 

We do this here also, then the teacher replies back to the the general account account which is then forwarded back onto the parent.

 

It doesn't take long before the parents guess the staff e-mail accounts, but through the above method it does work.

 

The reason we do not want staff directly e-mailing parents is to safe guard the staff, if a parent has an issue with a member of staff this is generally done via the headteacher, HOD or HOY to safeguard any issues with the teacher.

[webman]

On our Zimbra server, each member of staff has a second "persona" on their account - an address alias (initial & surname) and sender name (Mr/Mrs/Miss + Surname). A rule is applied that automatically uses that persona when replying to messages sent to its address alias.

 

It's also useful if they want to email students.

 

I'd have thought something like this was possible with MSexChange/Outlook...