Email Management

Instructions for accessing the course email are here: AccessingCourseConnectEmail

All course related emails should be sent from the CS 135 Course Account. Always CC the CS135 Course Account to maintain an up-to-date log on email responses.

Do NOT reply to emails from students sent to your personal email address.

Beginning of term

• MAKE A SCHEDULE. This is particularly important for larger teams.

  • Figure out who is responsible for handling emails on which days. There should be 1 or 2 ISAs monitoring, organizing, and replying to course emails everyday.

  • Enforce it! Keep each other accountable.

• Make an Outlook rule for emails from TAs: have all their emails redirect into a special folder. This will create separation between email communication with students vs. email communication with TAs.

  • (Optional) It may be useful to create a special rule/folder for emails from instructors as well.

  • Info on setting up Outlook rules: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/set-up-rules-in-outlook-75ab719a-2ce8-49a7-a214-6d62b67cbd41

During the term

• Flag emails that are not meant for you (or ones you don’t know how to answer), but still need to be responded to.

  • If a flagged email is meant for you, respond as soon as possible.

  • Make a clean sweep of all flagged emails as a team at least once a week.

General Etiquette

• The most important things: be clear, concise, and timely.

• If your email requires action from the recipient, make sure to specify a timeframe (this is especially important when communicating with instructors on pressing issues). Tip: to ensure things stay on track, you can say something like “unless we receive feedback within <timeframe>, we are going to go with <idea>”.

• Address students using their preferred name (what they used to sign off their email with if you are unsure).

• Do not respond to student queries sent from non-uwaterloo accounts. You can reply to them asking them to resend the query from their uwaterloo account.

• Spell-check!

Amy Luo - 2020-12-23

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