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Thank you for taking time to learn more about the RIT Message Center.
Have you ever wondered why you receive so much email from RIT? The fact of the matter is RIT is a thriving community of 20,000 people. The RIT campus is also a vital part of the Rochester community, which means that there is a lot going on here. And like any other thriving community there is a lot of information to be shared. RIT has developed a tool designed to help. The RIT Message Center, another helpful feature added to the myRIT portal, was designed to be a trusted source of communication allowing you as a member of the RIT community to tell us what type of information you want to receive and how you would like to receive it. Messages will be organized in the Message Center for easy access and convenience.
Having trouble envisioning what I am talking about? Let's take a look at the new RIT Message Center.
Log into the myRIT portal at my.rit.edu with your RIT Computer Account. You will notice the new MyRIT Message Board portlet in the center column. This is the RIT Message Center. This initial screen lets you know if you have any new messages.
However, before we view those, let's take a look at how you can tell us what you want to hear about, or in other words, choose your communication preferences. Select the 'Manage My Communication Preferences' link at the bottom of the box. There are categories of communications here with multiple sub-categories below them. Along the right-hand side of the box you can select either 'email' or 'myRIT'; these are your delivery mechanism choices. Whether at the category level or subcategory, you can tell us whether you want to receive your messages through email, the myRIT portal or not at all.
A few of these categories have asterisks next to them, those are mandatory categories that you cannot opt out of. As a member of the RIT community, we are obligated to notify you of certain things. For the first phase of Message Center we have identified Institute Emergencies and Important Announcements as categories that you cannot opt out of. All other categories are optional, so while these messages are of interest to the RIT community as a whole, they are not considered mandatory. If you do not want to get these messages, simply uncheck the boxes. Once you have made your choice, be sure to click the 'Update Preferences' button.
If you have selected to receive messages from a particular category through email, messages will be sent to your RIT email address. If you have the email forward option turned on, these messages will forward like all others.
Let's see how the emails will look. All emails will come from the RIT Message Center email address. This way you can be sure that you are only receiving messages that are mandatory OR that you specifically requested through Message Center. All email messages will contain a standard footer. The footer will identify the category and subcategory that the message came from and give you a link to the myRIT portal if you would like to change your preferences.
If you choose to receive your messages through the myRIT portal, you will be able to view those messages through the myMessage Board portlet. Select 'View My Message Board'. Here you will see all of the categories that you have opted in to. If you have any Institute Emergency messages, you will see them immediately in red. Along the right hand side there is a count of the number of messages you have in each category. If you have unread messages, the count will be highlighted... in orange of course. By selecting the '+' you can expand the subcategory to view a list of your messages. If you have more than five, select the 'show all' link to list all of them. To view individual messages simply select it. The forward and back arrows allow you to view the next or previous message. The 'X' allows you to delete it. To return to your message board select the arrow at the top. From the message board you can very quickly delete multiple messages by selecting individual check boxes then the delete button. Or if you would like to delete all of the messages in a category, simply select the check box next to the subcategory name and click the delete button. This delivery mechanism can serve to free up your email space and give you a place to store these messages for future reference.
So that's the RIT Message Center, at least the first phase. The intent of this phase was to lay the foundation for capturing what you want to hear about and how you want to hear about it.
Future phases will expand on this foundation by streamlining and extending the categories while also offering more delivery mechanisms.
The ultimate goal of the RIT Message Center is to meet your needs in reference to RIT communications. If this tool is not meeting your needs or if you see opportunities to improve we want to hear about it. Let me show you how you can send us your feedback.
First select the 'What's Next' tab. Here you will find the feedback form you can use to send us your input. We look at these messages every day and welcome your comments.
Thank you for your time and again, please help us make this a useful tool for you and your community.