Daily Announcements Guidelines

ABOUT
The UTMB Daily Announcements are a communication tool to enable members of the campus community to compose and send news and information related to UTMB business to all owners of UTMB email accounts. The message is submitted via a web page to a database; a computer program composes the daily email and sends the message early each weekday, excluding official UTMB holidays.

The program also publishes the information to a web page linked to the UTMB internal home page, iUTMB. Announcements are also archived in a database, and may be searched.

The Daily Announcements were originally created and launched in 1998. They were overhauled in 2000, 2004, 2012 and 2014. They were built and are managed collaboratively by Information Technology Services and the Office of Strategy & Communications.


ACCESS
Access to this communication resource is currently open to all faculty, staff and students. Use of the resource relies on good judgment and an understanding of and adherence to the terms and conditions associated with the tool's use. Users must follow the Daily Announcement guidelines, and be responsive to system administrators and the intended audience. Privileges to access the tool will be revoked for users who use the system inappropriately.


TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF USE

1. The announcement must be related to sanctioned UTMB activity and operations. The purpose of the Daily Announcements is to inform UTMB faculty, staff, and students about news, events and opportunities relevant to them and aligned with university business. It is not for advertising or communicating events or activities unrelated to UTMB and its mission, goals or business.

2. If it is not obvious how an announcement relates to UTMB, the relationship must be made clear in the announcement message. An example: An announcement about a garage sale is generally not UTMB business. A garage sale hosted on campus by a registered student group to raise money for scholarships is. Distinctions of this sort ' sponsorship of an activity, event, or message relating to sanctioned UTMB business or associated with a registered campus organization ' should be made explicit in messages.

3. Announcements may not be used to promote a business, commercial venture or for the personal gain of any UTMB employee.

4. Each announcement must include a contact name, phone number and email address for questions or additional information.

5. As a general guideline, an announcement should not be posted more than three times.

6. The announcements are not a public forum or discussion tool. The announcements are a mechanism for communicating to a wide audience about relevant news, activities, events and opportunities related explicitly to sanctioned university business. It is not a platform for debate or discussion, or for sharing any personal positions including political or religious beliefs.

7. The messages should be of interest/relevant to most of the wide audience that receives them. Daily announcements should not be used when a distribution list or direct e-mailing to a subset of the campus is a viable alternative.

8. Daily announcements should not direct users to possible security risks or unvetted external resources. When linking to and directing the UTMB community to resources for additional information, the referenced resources should live inside the UTMB domain (UTMB web pages, Sharepoint, etc), another trusted website, or other resource where there is high degree of certainty that risks from malicious threats or misinformation are mitigated.


HOW TO