MyEducation BC has functionality to send out mass communications via email. The Mass Email screen is accessed via Options > Send Email.
1. Email Recipients populated – When initiating an email from MyEducation BC, the recipients in the To: section are automatically populated or made available based on the top tab and side tab view that the user is currently at when initiating Options > Send Email. For example:
- Student top tab = *Contacts and **Teachers connected to the student
* with the Receive Email checkbox selected
** teachers associated to the student, including teachers from other schools - Contacts side tab = All student contacts with email addresses
– includes all student contacts regardless of the Receive Email checkbox status - Schedule side tab = All Teachers associated to the student
– including teachers from other schools - Staff top tab – only teachers at the school
The Mass Email screen currently displays a maximum of 150 recipients. This display maximum is a system performance safeguard. Where the number of recipients exceeds 150, the Mass Email screen will only indicate the total number of recipients based on the user selections.
2. Bcc: line – users can include additional email addresses here as well as their own email address to receive a copy. If you have more than one address in the Bcc: line, the separator is a comma (e.g., blahblah@shaw.ca, soandso@telus.com, youknowwho@gmail.com). If you use any other character to separate email addresses on the Bcc: line, the whole Bcc: line fails to deliver.
3. Subject Line: limited to 200 characters; will see an error if this limit is exceeded.
If the email is going to parents, always indicate which school is sending this email as parents have students in more than one school in the district/province.
This helps immediately put the email into context for parents.
For example, Subject: Esquimalt student photo day coming up on Oct. 2nd or, Subject: Lansdowne hot lunch orders are due by Sep. 20th
4. Email Attachment Size Limit: the total for all attachments is 7 MB. If the total size of the attachments is larger than 7 MB, the email will not send successfully.
5. Email Attachment Filename Limit: the filename of each attachment cannot exceed 56 characters, the email will not send successfully if the filenames exceed this limit.
6. Email Not Received: Mass emails sent from MyEducation BC can be rejected by the spam filtering on the recipient’s email account.
Recipients can bypass a spam filter rejecting an email by adding the MyEducation BC system email address as a trusted contact
MyEducation BC email address is: sysadmin@myeducation.gov.bc.ca
7. Strange characters appear when I copy and paste from Word/Outlook/etc.: 2 options:
- compose the email in a plain text format using Notepad or TextEdit if using a Mac and then copy and paste the email into the MyEducation BC Mass Email screen, or,
- prepare the communication in the desired format and then include it as an attachment to the email instead of putting it into the body of the email; ensuring that the attachment meets the size limit defined above.
8. Note: Emails sent from MyEducation BC cannot be recalled.