Use Messenger to Email Faster

Most of you use the WSD's Novell Instant Messenger. (if you are a WSD employee and you don't use it - you should)

Also, if you do NOT have all of the MESSENGER contacts for your school, you can get them here:

http://blog.weber.k12.ut.us/jumcfarland/2007/10/22/your-schools-messenger-contacts/(they were created at the first of the school year)

Alright, so your Messenger logs in when your computer boots up. It is recommended that you save your password. You shouldn't worry about somebody "logging into messenger as you", because if they can log into Novell at the very front, they've already got your password. If they log in as themselves, your Messenger will not log in. So, I would again recommend that you just have this automatically log in for you each morning, saving your password.

Also, you should log onto your email each morning. There is no way for the Client to keep your password, so you will have to manually enter this after your PC boots up.

You've got your contacts listed in your Messenger list. These can even be from other schools in the district.



****************************************************************************************************

If you want to send a quick email to one, several, or all of these contacts, RIGHT CLICK on their name(s), and select "Send E-Mail".



****************************************************************************************************

To select several of these contacts, click on one of them to highlight, and then hold your Ctrl button (in the lower corner of your keyboard) and select the others. When they are selected and Blue, RIGHT CLICK on any one of the selected names, and select "Send E-Mail" again.



****************************************************************************************************

And, to select ALL of the contacts within a folder, you could RIGHT CLICK on the folder itself (in my examples, the Roy Elementary folder), and then Send E-Mail. This would select everybody within that folder.

NOTE: The person may be offline in Messenger, and still receive an email.

When you hit Send E-Mail, but if you are not logged into GroupWise Email, you will be prompted to login. But if you ARE logged in, it will go directly to a new email window, where you can begin typing your subject and message.



****************************************************************************************************

Benefits of this method include:

• Faster method of adding contacts to an email


• Easier than typing the names in


• Quickly choose a whole range of people


• It is simpler to create your contact folders and names in Messenger, and then email from there

Let's say you were a Special Ed teacher/staff member, and you wanted a quick way to email other Special Ed employees at other schools. You could create a new folder in Messenger listing their names. Then you could send an email to all of them. Of course, if they are all online, you could select them all and just "Send Broadcast", but often, some of our contacts are offline and so Email is the best option. This could go for a group of 1st Grade teachers, Head Secretaries, Nurses, Librarians, etc....

Go ahead and test this out. If you need help getting the contacts of your school, let me know.

Thanks.