Compose

How to select recipient(s)

The key power, complexity, and usability pressure is found within the recipient selection area. The mailtool includes four different interfaces for recipient selection (for more information on other interfaces, see  "Mailtool Options - Instructor preferences"), but the default OOTB interface is the one shown here, labeled "Users by Role" in the Options screen:

Beginning at the top of the "Compose" screen, the From: field will show the email address of the current user. Whether this becomes the "reply-to" address for any response is something controlled by the options screen (again, see "Mailtool Options - Instructor preferences").

The To: section of the interface is where recipient selection occurs through checkboxes, with selections applied to roles, groupings, individual recipients, or any combination thereof.

The recipient lists are first arranged by role, and the respective site participants for each role can be listed by clicking on the "Select <role name>" action link, which expands the list and changes to a "Collapse" action link for collapsing the list once again. Recipients are ordered alphabetically by surname (although unfortunately not so in the early screenshot shown here). The mailtool will handle every role defined in the site in this way.

At the bottom of the To: section is a field for adding any optional email addresses, and it is labeled Other Recipient(s). These addresses will typically be for non-site participants.

How to attach file(s)

Directly beneath the recipient selection view is an action link which opens a widget for attaching files to the email message. These attachments are files added from the user's desktop, and thus are not handled as resources or "official" Sakai attachments.

Email Composition

The Subject: line displays the site title by default.
Whichever WYSIWYG editor is declared in sakai.properties is used is the message composition pane by default, but a plain-text box can be chosen in Mailtool Options - Instructor preferences.

Email Archive Integration

Below the composition pane are two options, and the first is simply for the sender to receive a copy of their own outgoing message. The second is whether a copy of this message should be appended to the Email Archive tool. If appended to the Email Archive it will thus be visible to all site participants. If the Email Archive is not enabled for the particular site, this latter choice will not appear.

Defaults for both these options can be set by the site maintainer (see "Mailtool Options - Instructor preferences").

The Send Mail button is the trigger: it distributes the message according to all the selections made.