GroupWise Email Skills

Most of the lessons below stand independently and do not require skills mastered in a previous lesson. So just pick a lesson that looks useful or interesting, click on the lesson number and then print out the one or two page instruction sheet that guides you through the skill.

Lesson 1 - Opening You GroupWise Account - There are two different methods of accessing your email account. The client view is available only at school while the WebAccess view is accessible from any Internet capable computer. This lesson explains each, their capabilities and limitations.

Lesson 2 - Opening and Reading a Message - Just the basics here of how to select and open a message sent to you which resides in your mailbox.

Lesson 3 - Replying to a Message - This skill is one of the most frequently used of all email tools and one of the most efficient allowing you to quickly send a message in response to a message you have received.

Lesson 4 - Sending a Message - This lesson walks you through the skills needed to address to message to a recipient.

Lesson 5 - Printing a Message - Printing a message which you have received or sent is a useful skill.

Lesson 6 - Using the Address Book - GroupWise maintains an internal address book of all the users in the district. Locating users’ addresses and inserting them into the To: field is the subject of this lesson.

Lesson 7 - Forwarding a Message - Often there is a need to send a message which you have received on to someone else. This is called ‘forwarding’ and easily accomplished in GroupWise.

Lesson 8 - Multiple Recipients/Carbon & Blind Copies - This lesson addresses the need to send a single message to more than one person.

Lesson 9 - Reviewing the Status of a Sent Message - With this skill you can easily check to see if a message you have sent has been opened and read by its recipient…useful if you were expecting a reply but haven’t received one.

Lesson 10 - Receiving an Attachment - At times a message will arrive withan attachment which is an appended file containing text, audio, video or programming data. This lesson walks you through opening the attachment to access this information. Lesson 13 addresses sending an attachment.

Lesson 11 - Creating a Personal Address Book - The district maintains the GroupWise Address Book which contains the names, locations and email addresses of all email account holders in the school district.

Lesson 12 - Configuration of the Mailbox View - This lesson shows you how to change the look of your mailbox and the manner in which it displays information.

Lesson 13 - Sending an Attachment - This skill is a little more involved than receiving an attachment but very useful in sending data such as Word/PowerPoint documents, photos, Promethean flipcharts, video clips, etc.

Lesson 14 - Deleting, Purging and Retrieving From Trash - This lesson shows you how to move messages to the trash can, scan messages in the trash, how to retrieve a message from the trash and how to ‘burn’ the trash to it is no longer retrievable.

Lesson 15 - Email Etiquette 101 - This medium, like all human interaction, has a set of informal rules of conduct that should be observed out of courtesy and to ensure that the meaning of your message is properly conveyed.

Lesson 16 - Retracting a Message - There’s always the ‘Ooops’ moment after you send a message in haste or anger when you wish you could ‘unsend’ it. There is a nice feature of GroupWise which will let you retract a message.

Lesson 17 - Changing Your Password - Your password is your key to the privacy of your email account. Using the skill outlined here, you can change your password at any time to a new value of your choosing.

Lesson 18 - Changing Fonts - Ten point Tahoma can get stale, especially when you’re really trying to get someone’s attention. This lesson shows you how to send text in different font styles, sizes and colors.

Lesson 19 - Creating a Signature File - It’s time consuming to add your title, position, mailing address, phone and fax to a message. This skill enables you to create a ‘signature file’ and add all this information at the end of your message with the click of a mouse.

Lesson 20 - Creating a Distribution Group - If you frequently send the same message to a group of friends or fellow professionals, a real time saver is to create a personal distribution list. Then by entering the name of the group in the To: field (e.g. SACS, Family, etc.), the message is sent to all the individuals listed in the group…a real time saver.

Lesson 21 - Email Etiquette 102 - More suggestions and some discussion of email safety and protecting your identity in cyberspace.

Lesson 22 - Cut & Paste for Email - If you’re not familiar with the basic Windows skill of ‘cut and paste’ this lesson is a must for you. It can be used in a wide variety of situations, not just email, and is often a real time saver.

Lesson 23 - Creating a Folder for Saved Messages - If you like to organize and save your messages, this lesson is a must as it describes how to create various folders and archive mail both sent and received.

Lesson 24 - Using the Quick Viewer - This lesson allows you to change the basic default view of your mailbox to include a Quick Viewer window to scan message content in a separate window as you scroll through messages.

Lesson 25 - Using the Spell Checker - Little is more embarrassing in a professional correspondence than a misspelled word. The built in GroupWise spell checker can easily be activated to scan your message, indicate errors and offer corrections. It’s a must unless you only email Aunt Jenny.

Lesson 26 - Configuring Notify - This GroupWise feature allows you to add visual and/or audio alerts to advise you when you receive a new message.

Lesson 27 - No Need For Junk Mail Handling - A couple years ago many users activated the internal GroupWise Junk Mail Handling feature which created a separate Junk Mail folder and diverted suspect messages to that folder. With the new IronPort spam filter in place, there is no longer a need for a separate Junk Mail folder, making scanning all your messages much easier. This lesson shows you how to quickly disable the Junk Mail feature.

Lesson 28 - Embedding Email Addresses and Web Links - This lesson describes how to easily embed hyperlinks into your messages which quickly connect recipients to web sites or email accounts.

Lesson 29 - Email and Privacy Concerns - This lesson outlines the concerns some users have regarding the privacy of their email account and where you stand with respect to the law and district policy.

Lesson 30 - Email Do’s and Don’ts - A few suggestions from veteran users.

Lesson 31 - Assigning a Priority to a Message - Here’s how to get a recipient’s attention before they even open your message…make you message shout, “Read Me!”

Lesson 32 - Implementing the AutoReply Feature - This lesson allows you to set up a wide variety of ‘rules’ to automate the messaging process.

Lesson 33 - Screen Captures - This lesson is not really a GroupWise skill but a Windows skill that enables you to ‘take a picture’ of whatever is on your computer monitor, save it and share it with others…even sending it as an attachment.