OVERVIEW
In alignment with What’s Next: The SFU Strategy and SFU’s digital transformation goals, SFU IT Services is strengthening cybersecurity and protecting our research, academic and business data. As part of these changes, SFU Maillist will be retired early 2025. The service will be replaced by Group Management (SFU Groups), External Mail Lists (SimpleLists), and Marketing and Event Management Service (Campaigner).
This article includes:
CHANGES STARTING EARLY 2025
- SFU Maillist will be retired early 2025. Read-only access will be available for troubleshooting purposes.
- All active maillist used for email distribution will be flagged for migration and IT Services will reach out to maillist owners/managers for next steps to migrate. You may or may not need to take action depending on how you use your maillist.
Note: Exact date to be determined.
WHO DOES THIS AFFECT?
- Anyone who owns or manages a maillist.
- Units that have integrated maillists into their business processes and technology.
- If you own or manage a maillist, you may or may not need to take action depending on how you use your maillist. See what actions do I need to take for guidelines.
WHAT THE FUTURE WILL LOOK LIKE?
EMAIL DISTRIBUTION MAILLIST
INTERNAL VS EXTERNAL RECIPIENTS
- 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.
DIFFERENCE ON SFU GROUPS (EXCHANGE DISTRIBUTION GROUPS)
- 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 permission 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.
- 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?.
SECURITY MAILLISTS
WHAT ACTIONS DO I NEED TO TAKE?
MAILLIST OWNERS/MANAGERS OF LISTS WITH INTERNAL-ONLY RECIPIENTS
If your maillist only contains internal recipients (only @sfu.ca recipients) IT Services will migrate active maillists on your behalf. Maillist names and email addresses will remain the same if migrated in this manner.
Active maillist that only contain internal recipients will be migrated and shown in the Active Maillist Migration List for visibility purposes. You can only see maillists that you own. Technical staff members will have additional features and visibility for troubleshooting purposes.
Once a maillist is migrated, it will become read-only on maillist.sfu.ca. To manage your groups, you'll need to use groups.sfu.ca.
In most cases, maillist owners and managers of these maillists won't need to take action. You will be notified in advance of the migration or if you need to take additional action.
WHAT IS AN ACTIVE MAILLIST?
Only active maillists will be automatically migrated. This means that if the maillist was used for email delivery within the last two years, 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 Exchange Distribution.
WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO NESTED MAILLISTS?
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 Permissions to that nested maillist when maillists are migrated over as Exchange Distribution Groups.
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 will need to get manager role for that maillist. Any nested maillists that you don't have permissions (owner or manager role) to will be removed from your maillist when migrated to Exchange Distribution Groups.
Be sure to check on the Active Maillist Migration List to see if you have any maillists that have "nested non-owned lists". To retain nested, non-owned maillists as members to your lists, contact their maillist owners for manager role to those nested maillists.
WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO MAILLIST WITH RESTRICTED SENDERS?
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.
If you wish to continue having restricted senders on your Distribution Group, you will need to re-enable this setting.
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.
MAILLIST OWNERS/MANAGERS OF LISTS WITH EXTERNAL OR BLENDED RECIPIENTS
If your maillist contains any number of external recipients (non-SFU email addresses), you will need to migrate your maillists to External Mail Lists (SimpleLists) or Marketing and Event Management Service (Campaigner). Unfortunately, there is no option to automate this process.
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.
MAILLIST OWNERS/MANAGERS OF SECURITY LISTS
If your maillist is only for security purposes (or access control), in most cases, your maillists will be automatically migrated to SFU Groups and you will be notified per service basis.
For example, when Microsoft Teams have updated to use SFU Groups, you will be notified and any maillist integrated with teams will be managed on SFU Groups. List names are retained and nothing needs to be changed (e.g., maillist-managed teams on Microsoft Teams, maillist-restricted AEM pages, and more will continue to work without disruptions).
However, if you or your team have integrated maillists into your business processes and technology that IT Services does not manage, you may either need to coordinate with your departmental IT staff to set up your list on Grouper (in which it will be available to you to manage at groups.sfu.ca) or migrate the list yourself onto Grouper if you are an IT staff before early 2025.
What is a security list?
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.
How do I know if my maillist is used for security?
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.