HANDLING ORCHESTRALIST by EMAIL ALONE

A summary of all email commands you can use in this groups.io orchestralist system may be found here. This includes subscribing and unsubscribing, fairly obvious, but, as there are four kinds of email formats you can ask for, as well as a "mute" option you might not be familiar with, these are described below.

When you subscribed, you had to option to choose from several different email formats that worked for you best. This includes individual emails, full-digests, plain-digests, summary digests, and special mail only (important messages from the moderators). If you didn't go online to choose your subscription choice, the default is individual emails. The following describes how all this works and what you can expect, in particular what information is in the received emails or digests that you can further use (click on, to reply to, etc.)

Sending a new Email

To start a new topic, create a new email in your home email client, specify a subject, and enter whatever you want into the body of the message. Send the message to orchestralist@groups.io. And that's it! (You can only send from the email address that you signed up with.)

Anyone who replies to this message (to the group, not privately) will have their email be part of your new topic. If you were to logon online to orchestralist's groups.io page you will be able to see all message responses that are part of your new topic, under the messages link.

Receiving an Individual Email

At the bottom of each individual email you received there may be a trailer appended by groups.io that looks like this:

I have obscured an email address at the end which in real life will be your email address. Also, that "(#94)" after "View/Reply Online" is a message number - it will be whatever the message number is for your message.

The two links "Reply to Group" and "Reply to Sender" when clicked will bring up your email client to form a reply to this message. It will create a subject line, basically "Re:" in front of the message's subject, so that the system will know your reply will become part of this topic. If for some reason you want your reply to start a new topic, then change the subject in your email client, and continue as before. When you send your message it will either go back to the group or the sender of the message depending on which of those two links you chose. You can also just use your email clients "Reply" button to return the email to the orchestralist group.

The link "Contact Group Owner" will also bring up your email client in order to send a message to the orchestralist moderators. The remaining links will all bring up your browser to login to orchestralist in order to perform the indicated action (these links are "View/Reply Online", "Mute This Topic", "New Topic", "Your Subscription", and "Unsubscribe"). Of course, you don't have to go online to create a New Topic - just create a new email with your email client as per "Sending a new Email" above.

"Mute This Topic": See below.

PLEASE NOTE: You might not see the above pictured full set of links, but instead only four, which will have "View/Reply Online", "Mute This Topic", "Group Owner", and "Unsubscribe". If you get this reduced set of links, you can still reply to the group by just using your email clients Reply button. But, you can't directly email back just to the sender (without going online) unless the sender includes their email address in the message. This seems to be entirely related to the message senders email client. (I am trying to get more exact information about this and what if anything we can do about it.) At this juncture it appears that, e.g., gmail works fine but comcast.net does not.

Receiving a Full Digest

At the top of each Full Digest you will see a header of which the following is an example:

This example was taken from one of the smaller digests sent from the groups.io group we created to test out it's features before deciding on moving orchestralist from YahooGroups to Groups.io. You will note you can't reply to the message itself using groups.io supplied links; (so, no more replies that quote an entire digest, if you follow this rule and only use the groups.io links supplied under each message.)

The digest header shows the list of topics contained below, and for each topic it indicates the number of messages in that topic shown below (if more than 1). In the example, the topic "Xfer moving along" has two messages in the digest. Each one will be numbered as in the header, so the first message will be message "1a", and the second "1b", and the next message (a different topic), is message "2".

Below each message in the full digest there is a set of links, viz:

These have the same meanings as those on emails that are sent separately. The "Top^" link when clicked just moves you to the top of the email digest. The "Reply to Group" and "Reply to Sender" links bring up your email client for you to form your reply there, initializing the appropriate subject line and return address depending on which link is pressed. The other three options "New Topic", "Mute Topic", and "View/Reply Online" all take you to your browser to logon to the orchestralist group online to perform their functions.

There will be at most 12 messages per digest. If more than 12 messages are written in a day, you would receive multiple digests.

Receiving a Plain Digest

This is a plain-text version of a digest. All information in it is plain text except for some useful clickable links. All except one link in it operates a reply or other function that will bring up your browser and require you to logon to the orchestralist group online. Like full digests, there will be at most 12 messages in each, and the topics in the header and messages contained therein are numbered the same.

The links in a plain digest allow you to view or reply to a message, mute a topic, change your subscription, go to the orchestralist home page online, unsubscribe, or even view the groups.io terms of service. However, there should be a link in the "From:" field of a message, indicating the email address of the sender, and it is clickable to bring up your email client to respond privately just to the author.

Receiving a Summary (Title) Digest

In this type of digest, called a daily summary, you only get the titles of the topics that were either replied to since the previous morning, or new topics created since the previous morning, these two types grouped separately, and you will get all of them, no 12-per-digest limit. If a topic had more than one message in it, the number of messages will be shown in a gray oval after the title. All links in the summary will bring up your browser and require you to logon to the orchestralist group online. Here's an example from our test group:

You can click on the topic titles to go directly to that topic (online, after logging in). There are also four links on the bottom, all taking you online requiring you to logon, that take you to the orchestralist group home page online, or to your subscription part, or to the messages, or to create a new topic.

Muting a Topic

Every message in the system is considered part of a topic - a topic is an initial email and all of the replies to that email. If you don't want to see/receive emails on the topic of this email you can "mute" it, by selecting this link. As people keep replying to this topic you won't see those messages. Remember, this link will take you to your browser to logon to orchestralist online in order to perform this action. This link is found below each message in both individual messages and full digests.

Receiving Special Notices Only

In our groups.io system subscribers can still specify that they receive no email from other members, but they will still receive special email from the moderators (rare, but important messages to all subscribers.) We have turned off the capability to get "No Email" of any kind as a precaution.