Message Center Guidelines

There is a better way to organize your official RIT email and other campus notifications via Message Center. The goal of Message Center is to create a trusted source of university communication that allows you to identify what communications you want to receive and how you want to receive that information. Key features include:

• The ability to receive messages via email or view messages on a message board, or select both.
• Message categories—Categories have been created to include mandatory (“Institute Emergencies” and “Important Institute Announcements”) and 17 optional messages so you can get a sense of what each communication is about before reading it. This feature allows you to select the amount of communication you want to receive.
• Opt-out capabilities—While you will not be able to opt out of mandatory communications (e.g., institute emergencies, institute closings, etc.), you will have the opportunity to opt out of the 17 “general announcement” categories.

In today's world of spam and "scam" emails it is important for RIT students, faculty, and staff to be able to easily determine that the RIT communications they receive are valid. All Message Center emails you receive will originate from a single Message Center email address and standard text will appear at the end of every message identifying Message Center as the source of the message. 

RIT Faculty or staff wishing to become a Message Center administrator, giving the ability to send messages, should submit their request to the ITS Service Desk.

While you will not be able to opt-out of mandatory communications (e.g. University emergencies, closings, etc.), you will have the opportunity to opt-out of the 17 “general announcement” categories. This means you can opt out of getting email as well as the message board.

Deselect which announcements you do not want to receive via email or myRIT. You cannot opt out of University Emergency notifications. You may opt out of email OR myRIT for Important University Announcements, but not both.

Best Practices and protocol for administrators:
We need your help in using Message Center in the appropriate fashion. As administrators, it is important that you do not abuse the system by sending them too many messages to the community. It is viewed as spam and will quickly be deleted. Please consider the following for effective communication:

• Send only one message. Be strategic on the subject line and the timing, particularly if it is an event.
• Refrain from sending picture only messages, many recipients are on mobile devices and receive a blank image.
• Provide the date, time, location, and contact information where appropriate for your message.
• Consider putting your message in News & Events Daily produced by University Communications. The electronic newsletter has a robust calendar for events and has the ability to produce "advertisements" if you have larger events. Contact Marie Lang for more information on disseminating your message.
• Consider other options beyond Message Center for disseminating your message, ranging from message boards to social media.

Let's all do our best to use Message Center more effectively.