Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2012 8:44 am
kisaac wrote:Not that I know of specifically, but you can use the calendars' event notifications feature "creatively" to accomplish what you want- which is to send emails to those subscribed to a certain calendar
My suggestion wasn't really to find a workaround to email the whole ward or stake, but rather in response to the question of the OP and his follow-up question on how to email to all the subscribers of a calendar.mwgbell wrote:Kisaac mentions that you could use the calendar feature to "creatively" notify people -- I suppose that would work as long as you were able to figure out which calendars all stake members were subscribed to; and that also assumes that the recipients haven't turned off "notifications".
I saw the OP's and his follow-up as this: To send an email about an event, you really must send it to EVERYONE involved with that organization, and his example of the mom of a deacon is "spot on." A deacons event would need to go to the deacons themselves, (probably not effective) the deacons leaders and ward leaders over the deacons, and the parents of the deacons (the most effective.) And how to email all these people? They all would subscribe to a deacon's calendar, so an email to calendar subscribers would be perfect, but can't be done. My suggestion was to modify the event and let the calendar send an "updated" event notification out to all the subscribers, who allow notifications, effectively emailing them. The event description is your reminder message.
I've done this often; like for a ward party, and for stake conference.
However, if you are emailing your ward or stake, why not use the messaging tool in the leaders tool in new lds.org as aebrown mentioned? I don't use classic anymore, and everything I do now is on the new LDS.org tools. I use the calendar to email (like I just described,) and I use the leader tools "send a message" function, which is the new email function. www.lds.org/messaging I don't know if it is available to a website admins. I don't email from the directory, but that is possible if you have an email client on your machine, which I don't.
(UPDATE: it actually IS possible to email from the directory using gmail now...my mistake)
Two observations: First, these email tools need some tweaking from the programmers to improve the BCC (blind carbon copy) functions, and some kind of reporting about who was sent the email. I'd love to see a report of who didn't get the email (the bounces,) but I think that is asking too much. Additionally, the tool should expand the messaging options to the assistant clerks and maybe others to match what bishops and stake presidents can do, because it is us who are asked to do emailing on their behalf.
Second, email is nowhere near as effective as I would hope. While it is a huge labor saving device for a leader to "send an email," if the message isn't being received, what did you save?