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Group Communication, Collaboration, and Mass Notification Options

Office 365 and Google Workspace email accounts have limitations to how many people a message can be addressed to. Learn more about what options are available if you need to reach a broad audience.

Information and recommendations below are subject to change as new services complete their rollout.

Discussion

Use a Cornell e-list when you want to send a message to a large distribution group and allow recipients to respond to that message and each other.

Microsoft Teams is also an option for small work group discussions.

Simple Notifications

Use a Cornell e-list to send simple notifications (updated meeting time, etc.) to large groups of people.

Office 365 and Google Workspace may be a good choice for smaller distribution lists.  

Customized Messages

Elaborate Formatting

If you need to send an email that’s visually more elaborate than you can create in Outlook, build the message with a tool of your choice then email it to a Cornell e-list

Alternatively, you can use Marketing Cloud which has built-in tools for more elaborate formatting.

Personalized Messages and Engagement Analytics

Use Marketing Cloud for message personalization (mail-merge) or collecting engagement analytics.

Document Collaboration

Box has a variety of built-in tools to help you store and organize files, collaborate, and share documents and other files in the cloud.

You can also use Microsoft Teams if you need to send a document to a group of people and allow that group to comment or make changes to it.

Tool Comparison

  • Cornell E-Lists (Lyris and Simplelists)

    Recommended for:

    • Student, staff, and faculty use
    • Situations where you will email the same individuals many times
    • Distribution lists where members control their subscription status
    • Discussions among people with a shared interest or business concern
    • Simple messaging or notifications
    • Visual customization

    NOT recommended for: 

    • Mail-merge customization

    • Engagement tracking 

    • Document sharing and collaboration

       

      Learn more about Cornell e-lists.

  • Microsoft Teams

    Recommended for:

    • Discussions among members of a work group (text-chat and video conference)
    • Document sharing and collaboration
    • Notifying small groups

    NOT recommended for: 

  • CornellAD

    Recommended for:

    • Staff and faculty use
    • Cornell-only distribution lists
    • Situations where you will email the same individuals many times (a mail-enabled CornellAD group is only counted as one recipient)

    NOT recommended for: 

  • Microsoft Outlook and Google Workspace

    Recommended for:

    • Meeting invitations
    • Notifying small groups

    NOT recommended for:

  • Exchange Group Account (EGA)

    Recommended for:

    • Staff and faculty use
    • Situations where you will email many people and the reply-to address should be a shared mailbox or functional role

    NOT recommended for:

  • Marketing Cloud

    Recommended for:

    • Engagement tracking
    • Mail-merge customization
    • Sending content to specific audiences at specific times through diverse channels (whether email, messaging, or social media)

    NOT recommended for: 

  • Third-Party Senders

    Learn more about using third-party senders before using an external vendor to distribute official Cornell messages. 

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