6.1.1 Sending Emails

From any list of members, select the names that you wish to send an email to. Choose Send E-mail from the drop-down list below the table and press the Do with selected button.

Enter a Subject for your message and then type your message in the blank area below. Basic text formatting can be done using the buttons above the main body of the email.

You can vary the line spacing in the message by using hard or soft returns:

• A Hard Return (using Enter) gives a full line space before the next line of text.
  
  
• A Soft Return (using Shift+Enter) will put the following words on a separate line immediately below the preceding text.

Note: Please be aware that there is no ‘spell check’ in Beacon. Also, if the Send Email page is left open for a long time it may time out. Therefore long emails are best composed in a document outside of Beacon before copy and pasting into Beacon. Alternatively, add the ‘outside’ document as an attachment (see below). 

'From' and 'To' addresses
The From address is taken from your Member Record. If you are also assigned to an Office (see 9.3), the Office email address will also be displayed in the From drop-down list and you can choose the address that you want to use.

The list of recipients is displayed in the To This is for information only, they cannot be changed here. If you wish to remove or add recipients, you will need to cancel the email by clicking your internet browser’s back arrow to return to the previous page.

There is a tick box where you can select to receive a copy of the email, although this is not necessary if you are one of the names selected in the list of members. A copy sent to self by ticking the box will not have the personalised details created from ‘Tokens’ described below.

Tokens
The Tokens listed on the right side of the browser can be used in the text to personalise the email, e.g. typing #FAM customises every email with the member’s Familiar Name (or Forename if a Familiar Name is not recorded). 

Following the #, there must not be a space, and that the whole word must be in upper case.

Tips: -

• Copy/paste a token name from the list
• Tokens also work in the subject line
• Be aware some Tokens disclose personal data such as #TELEPHONE
• #FORENAME will only use the first name in the field. If you use #FAM and there is not Familiar Name for the member it will include all the names in the Forename field.

Note - when sending emails from the U3A Officers list (in the Misc column) then tokens are not available (this is a bug).

Attachments
If you wish to send one or more attachments with the message, press the Browse button (the format will vary between browsers) and select each file in turn. To remove any file from the message, click on the small x before the filename.

• The ‘Browse’ button may be replaced by a box to click in when using Apple computers and some types of tablet or smart phone.
  
  
• It is recommended that attached files don’t have long names or names that contain special characters such as brackets because these can sometimes cause delivery problems.
  
  
• There is no practical limit to the number of attachments you can send with Beacon, but many email servers impose limits on the number or size of attachments that recipients can receive. It is wise, therefore, not to send more than a few attachments with any one message and to minimise attachment size. Also, to reduce the likelihood of emails being flagged as spam, it is recommended that attachments are not used when sending to a large number of recipients (over 50).
  
  
• There is an absolute total limit of 20MB that can be uploaded. If this is exceeded the error message 413 Request Entity Too Large.

External Links To include a link to a website in your message, put the cursor at the position where the link is required and click the Chain icon.  In the resulting dialog box, enter the full website URL (including the http or https prefix) and the Text to Display in the email (this should be a meaningful description of the webpage you are linking to, rather than a copy of the URL). By selecting from the Link list, you can insert links for membership applications and renewals online if they are configured for your U3A (see 9.4). When Renewals is selected from the Link List the URL field will be populated with the Members Portal URL shown in your Public Links settings. The link will also include the member’s Membership number. When the member clicks on the link they will be taken to Member’s Portal page and they will not be asked to provide their Membership number as Beacon will know this from the URL.

Sending the Email
When the email is ready to go, click Send. Sometimes you may be presented with a CAPTCHA screen (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) which will ask you to tick a box to demonstrate that you are not a robot.

For additional recommendations about sending emails see Tips for Sending Emails from Beacon.

Sending email with a secondary email address

When Beacon is used to send an email then the "From" address will be the email address held in the sender's Member record. If a receiver of the email replies it will automatically be dispatched to this address.

Some U3As will have registered a domain (e.g. demotonu3a.org.uk) and operate email addresses such as [e-mail]. Others create secondary addresses like [e-mail]. These addresses can be set up in Beacon by adding U3A Officers.

In this example, when the Chair sends an email from Beacon they will see a drop-down list for the From entry enabling them to select either their personal email or the Chair's email [e-mail]

While this section is called U3A Officers it has no formal status. There is no reason why Group Leaders/Conveners can't be put in the U3A Officers section with an Office E-mail of their choice.

Email Delivery
You can check upon the progress of emails sent by clicking Email delivery on the Home page as described in section 6.1.3.

Revision History

v1	2020-04-04	Graeme Bunting	First version.
v2	2020-05-18	Graeme Bunting	Reference to Beacon User Guide replaced by a link to the Knowledge Base article about tips for sending emails from Beacon
v3	2020-08-13	Graeme Bunting	Mention of bug with tokens when using U3A Officers
v4	2021-04-03	Graham Tigg	Formatted this Revision History section to include author
v5	2021-04-04	Lyn Bossons	Added further info about Members Portal & External Links
v6	2021-04-11	Graeme Bunting	Added further info about Tokens
v6	2021-04-27	Graham Tigg	Added article "Sending email with a secondary email address" from the KB
v7	2021-07-19	Graham Tigg	Limit of 20MB upload noted.
v8	2022-02-05	Graham Tigg	Added tips including TOKENS work in the subject line
v8	2022-05-10	Graham Tigg	Added that #FORENAME only uses first name in the field and to use #FAM to substitute all forename names.