SFU Maillist Retirement - Migration Information

For email distribution:

• Internal recipients: Refers to any email address that ends with @sfu.ca. This also includes some safe-listed domains hosted by SFU, including @cs.sfu.ca and @rcg.sfu.ca.
• External recipients: Generally, refers to any email address that's not SFU. In technical terms, any other recipient that does not meet the "internal recipient" requirement.

The functional differences are:

• Restricted Senders Security: Enabling Restricted Senders on an Exchange Distribution Group will require any sender to authenticate to Exchange. This means that users will need to be signed into an SFU's Approved Email Application in order to send to an Exchange Distribution Group with Restricted Senders.
• Nesting Permission: To add another Group as a member of your Group, you are required to have Manager or Readers privileges on the Group before you're able to add it as a member to your own Group.
• No self-subscribe or unsubscribe: You will need to move to and use SimpleList if you require this feature.
• No external users: You will need to move to and use SimpleList if you require sending emails to external (non-SFU) email addresses.
• To see the full list of changes, visit Differences between SFU Groups and SFU Maillist.

Note: These are functional differences between SFU Maillist and SFU Groups. For impacts or changes to your maillist resulting from migration, see What actions do I need to take?.

Only active maillists will be automatically migrated. This means that if the maillist was used for email delivery since July 2022, it is considered active and will be migrated for email distribution to Exchange Distribution Groups on SFU Groups.

If you own active maillists, they should appear on the Active Maillist Migration List which means that they'll be automatically migrated to SFU Groups as Exchange Distribution Groups.

Note: Maillists that are only used for security won't appear on the Active Maillist Migration List since they're not used for email delivery. See Maillist for Security below.

Yes, any maillist that hasn't been used for email delivery since July 2022 can still be migrated for the purposes of email distribution. Simply send an email to the maillist and it will appear in the Active Maillist Migration List the following day.

 

For assistance, request a support ticket using Group Management - Submit Question or Inquiry.

Maillist nesting refers to adding a maillist as a recipient (or member) of another maillist.

Since the permissions model is different in SFU Groups, if you are an owner of a maillist with a nested maillist, you will now require Reader or Manager privileges to that nested maillist when maillists are migrated over as Exchange Distribution Groups.

WHAT DO I NEED TO DO - NESTED MAILLIST WITHIN DEPARTMENT

If you also happen to be the owner of that nested maillist, you don't need to take additional action. If the nested maillist is not owned or managed by you, you should get manager role for that maillist prior to migration for a seamless transition to SFU Groups.

Be sure to check on the Active Maillist Migration List to see if you have any maillists that have "nested non-owned lists". Contact the maillist owners of those "nested non-owned lists" for manager role to those nested maillists.

WHAT DO I NEED TO DO - NESTED MAILLIST CROSS DEPARTMENT

If the nested maillist is owned by someone from another department, you should get manager role for that maillist prior to migration for a seamless transition to SFU Groups.

Be sure to check on the Active Maillist Migration List to see if you have any maillists that have "nested non-owned lists". Contact the maillist owners of those "nested non-owned lists" for manager role to those nested maillists.

Nested maillist from another department where they haven't been migrated yet:

• Your nested maillist will be automatically removed from the membership list.
• Once removed from the membership list, you will need to wait until the other department has also migrated. If you followed the steps above prior to migration, you should have manager role to the remove nested maillist. Simply re-add the nested maillist on SFU Groups.

Nested maillist from another department where they already migrated:

• If you followed the steps above prior to migration, you should have the correct privileges to the nested maillist on SFU Groups. You don't need to take additional action.

This refers to maillists that has the setting, "Restrict Sender" or "Allow list", enabled.

After migrating these maillists to Exchange Distribution Groups, this setting will be turned off by default and allowing any SFU member to send email to the group.

If you wish to restrict sending ability to specific individuals or groups, you will need to apply this setting on SFU Groups.

Note the additional security requirements: Users will need to be signed into an SFU's Approved Email Application in order to send emails to an Exchange Distribution Group with Restricted Senders. This can have technical implications to automated emailing systems.

For technical details, see Differences between SFU Groups and SFU Maillist.

Note: Only course/plan groups are exceptions to this and will have their Restricted Sender setting migrated.

Course and academic plan lists will be migrated along with its department. This will happen between January to April 2025.

SFU Maillist can no longer send email to external addresses since Summer 2024.

If you own an active maillist that contain external recipients, it will still be automatically migrated to SFU Groups and shown in the Active Maillist Migration List. However, any external recipients on maillists will be automatically removed upon migration to SFU Groups.

To continue sending emails to external users, switch to SimpleList or Campaigner. Alternatively, you can 'cc' any external recipients when using Exchange Distribution Group (SFU Groups).

• SimpleLists does support importing membership to make setup a bit easier. If migrated to SimpleLists, maillist names and email addresses will be different where @sfu.ca will become @lists.sfu.ca.
• Campaigner facilitates various marketing features and allows for one-way messaging only: from you to the members. For maillists that are used for email campaigning, you may want to migrate to Campaigner.

The following will be removed from your membership list when migrated to SFU Groups:

• External emails
• Expired, inactive or destroyed SFU accounts (e.g., expired sponsored accounts, accounts of those who no longer at the university)
• Nested maillists from another department (only in cases where that department hasn't been migrated yet, and your department is/being migrated)

Yes, user privileges will be migrated. However, since SFU Groups doesn't have the concept of ownership, owners will be given manager privileges. This is by design to ensure ownership doesn't become stale.

Security lists (or access control lists) refers to maillists that are used for security or access control to services or resources.

 

For example, you may have used a maillist to control which members (SFU accounts) have access to a departmental team on Microsoft Teams, access to an AEM website, or access to a shared folder on SFU Vault.

Unfortunately, there is no definitive way to know if you maillist is currently being used by a service for security purposes or access controls.

 

There may be some hints or indications based on the maillist name, description, or working knowledge from staff members.

To ensure a smooth transition, your security maillists will continue to work normally. However, maillists will become read-only and you will no longer be able to edit the membership list.

 

We encourage you to migrate your security maillists to SFU Groups to ensure uninterrupted edit access to your security membership groups.