distribution list limit for number of users?

[Craig Silvis]

GroupWise 6.5.4 on server agents and clients.
Our marketing department wants to send a mass notification periodically to all users.
We have around 3,000 users.
If we set up a distribution list with all users in it will the POA choke on it?
We have a list of 800 users that seems to be okay, i.e. I've never heard of any problems when it was used.
Should we set up 6 lists of 500 users each and then send one list each hour by setting the send time in the message?
That would be a maintenance nightmare, trying to keep track of how many were in each list.
Is there a POA limit to the number of recipients allowed?
Will the MTA batch them in groups to the POA or will the POA throttle them automatically?
I read on another post that there was no way to force the MTA to send off hours but you could set it to a lower priority to make it wait till the server wasn't busy - is that the best way to handle a large mass mailing like this too?

Related question - is there a limit to the number of users that can be exported by the GroupWise import/export facility in C1?
I tried to use that to identify who was already in a group by exporting all GroupWise groups but I found that there were groups that didn't have users exported to the csv file that were members of the group.
I can see they are users of the group in C1 but they don't show up on the delimited list.
Of course the groups are large so I suspect there is a limit in the export.

Thanks for your consideration,
-cas

[Dave Parkes]

Don't use distribution lists, see TID 10007348

Cheers Dave

[Craig Silvis]

I'm looking at that now.

What can you tell me about the way GroupWise handles a mass mailing like that?
Will GroupWise have a problem with an email to thousands of recipients?
Does it batch them or single thread them or what?

Should we set the id that sends it out to default to sending low priority mail?

I am already planning on setting the expiration to something like 30 or 60 days so the users that never read their email won't be constantly collecting these.

Any more gotcha's you know of?

Thanks,
-cas
Don't use distribution lists, see TID 10007348

Cheers Dave

[Dave Parkes]

As they are internal messages, GW is pretty quick, but I'd set it going at
a quiet time of the day, as it will make the system run warm for a few
minutes on that quantity of users.

Cheers Dave

[Craig Silvis]

Thanks for all of your help on this.
I created a resource to do the mailing and allowed wild card addressing for just that resource.
I set the expiration to 30 days and locked it down.
I set the priority to low and locked that down too.
I like your idea about sending at a quiet time of day but I didn't see how I could do that as a default option.
This is unfortunate since without that the user who is sending it has to remember to send it at a quiet time of day.
And we all know how consistent we humans are.
Another follow up item is to go into any accounts that are not real users and set rules to delete anything coming in from this resource.
Not strictly neccessary with the expiration date locked down at 30 days but it would still be a good thing to do.
Thanks again,
-cas
As they are internal messages, GW is pretty quick, but I'd set it going at
a quiet time of the day, as it will make the system run warm for a few
minutes on that quantity of users.

Cheers Dave

[Dave Parkes]

As the priority is set to low, this mass mail will only amble out when the
normal/high priority queues are empty. However, I believe that as it is
only a single email, once it starts running, everything else might get
stuck behind it. I think I'd try a test one to see how long this run does
take and what it does to the server.

Cheers Dave

[Craig Silvis]

We don't want to allow wildcarding for everyone so I set it to not allow at the post office and then turned it on for the id that will send out the mass mailing.
I found I could not lock it back down for everyone or it reverted to not allow for that user.
If I leave it unlocked am I correct in assuming only people with sufficient permission using C1 can turn on wildcard addressing for an individual user?
Is there any way for a user to set that for themselves if the option is unlocked?
I looked on the client but didn't see anything but I could have been looking in the wrong place.
-cas
Don't use distribution lists, see TID 10007348

Cheers Dave

[Dave Parkes]

Yep, just turn it off at the higher level, but don't lock it, then turn it
on for those accounts you want to use the function. You can find out
whether you are allowed to use it by trying to use that wildcard
addressing, it'll either work or bring up an error message.

Cheers Dave