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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 deprecated starting February 2025. The service will be replaced by Groups Management (SFU Groups), External Mail Lists (SimpleList), and Marketing and Event Management Service (Campaigner).
This article includes:
CHANGES STARTING FEBRUARY 2025
- SFU Maillist will be deprecated starting February 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.
WHO DOES THIS AFFECT?
- Anyone who owns or manages a maillist.
- Units that have integrated maillists into their business processes and technology.
WHAT THE FUTURE WILL LOOK LIKE?
FOR 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.
CHANGES WHEN MOVING TO 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 will require Manager or Readers permission on the group you wish to nest.
- 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.
FOR ACCESS CONTROL AND 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.
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 your maillist is owned by someone who is no longer at the university, these maillists should've been automatically set to inactive.
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 owned by another user, IT Services may reach out for additional action from you.
More details to come.
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.
See Differences between SFU Groups and SFU Maillist for details.
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 List (SimpleList) or Marketing and Event Management Service (Campaigner). Unfortunately, there is no option to automate this process.
SimpleList does support importing membership to make setup a bit easier. If migrated to SimpleList, 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 ACCESS CONTROL LISTS
If your maillist is not used for emailing and only for security purposes, 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.