Campus Mailing List – Service Level Agreement

Service Overview

This Service Level Agreement (SLA) defines the levels of service and expectations for the Campus Mailing List Service.   The intended users of this service include Campus organizations, departments, researchers, and research centers affiliated with the University of Illinois.   This open source mailing list management environment is powered by Sympa, www.sympa.org, and provides a scalable solution with these key features:  list owner administrative control, list member provisioning mechanisms (LDAP, SQL, remote data sources, etc…), authenticated access, web archiving, bounce management tools, with a web and email interface for the subscribers and list owners.  

Stakeholders

The following definitions provide the base roles and stakeholders for this service level agreement.

Provider:  The Technology Services Group at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Customer:  ‘Name Here’  

Service Agreement

The Campus Mailing List Service will provide:

  • Web and email interfaces to the mailing list service that scales to meet the Customer needs.
  • All inbound email will be processed by the Campus Spam filtering service.
  • User guide for list owner and subscriber How-to and FAQs from the: Campus Mailing Lists Users Guide. 
  • Custom CSS to match the organizations color scheme and logo.
  • Owner control of list settings and behaviors to include:
    • adding members from remote sources
    • defining who can post to the list
    • member control to define:  block, safe and moderation lists
    • mail archive properties (open, closed, owner access only, etc..)
    • event logs
    • shared document space for list members
    • and many other features…

Email Size Limit

  • There is a 10MB limit on total message size which includes: message header, body and attachment(s).

New Mail List Requests

  • Only @illinois.edu, @staff.cic.net, or @uis.edu users will see the “Create List” tab to request a new list.
  • Only Facility, Staff, GRA and Student officers of Registered Organizations (RO) can request new lists.
  • The administrators defined by the Listmaster will receive a new list notification and must approve or deny the creation of the new list.   
  • The person who requests the new list becomes the default “privileged owner” and has admin privileges and responsibilities for that list.  The privileged owner can assign other “normal owners” and “privileged owners” to assist with management or delegate list management.  See the Campus Mailing Lists Users Guide for list owner how-to’s and FAQs.

Archive

  • The email Archive for a list is kept for 1 year unless the list owner coordinates a different recycle period. 

Closed Lists

  • If a list doesn’t receive email for one year it is consider inactive and should be closed by the Listmasters.
  • The list owner can request a closed list be reinstated at any time before the system purge.  
  • Closed lists will be purged from the Campus Mailing List Server after 1 year of being closed. 
  • The system purge will occur only when a list is inactive for 1 year and is closed for 1 year so the owner has two years to re-instantiate the list. 

List Ownership Transfer

  • The new owner of a mail list must be a campus Facility, Staff, GRA or Student Officer of a Registered Organizations (RO).
  • The easiest way to transfer ownership is for a “privileged owner” to assign a new “privileged owner”.  This can be accomplished by clicking on:   (Admin) > Edit List Config > List definition – Owner, add the new owner’s email address and name to the Owners List and select the ‘privileged‘ setting under the ‘profile‘ field and click the Update button at the bottom of the page. 
  • If a previous owner leaves the University and does not delegate new ownership, the Listmaster Admins can assign another person ownership as long as they are Facility, Staff or Student officer for that RO.  We will verify the new person’s identity with the Campus Directory and Student Officers of ROs will be verified using https://illinois.collegiatelink.net/Organizations which is updated by  http://union.illinois.edu/get-involved/office-of-registered-organizations.  

Requirements and Responsibilities 

The Customer requirements and responsibilities include:  

  1. The Customer is the owner of the data and must maintain the integrity of the mailing lists for their community.
  2. The Customer must adhere to relevant University ‘acceptable use’ and ‘security policies’.
  3. The Customer must assign mailing list administrator(s) who will take the role of Listmaster for that server.  
  4. The Customer’s Listmaster(s) is responsible for supporting the mailing list owner community.  
  5. The Customer’s mailing list owners are responsible for supporting the Customer’s mailing list subscribers.
  6. The Customer will respond to Technical Service requests in a timely manner.
  7. The Customer will provide payment for all supported costs for the agreed interval.

Technical Services (TS) at the University of Illinois requirement and responsibilities include: 

  1. TS will maintain the servers and maintain the server and software with minimal disruption to the Customer.
  2. TS will increase the server’s resources (CPU, RAM, Disk) as needed to meet the scaling needs of the mailing list community.
  3. TS will provide technical support to the Customer’s Listmaster group.
  4. TS will respond to Customer requests for help in a timely manner. 
  5. TS will advise the Customer on best practices, policies, requirements and security related issues.
  6. TS will coordinate and troubleshoot issues with the Customer’s Listmaster  team.
  7. TS will provide monitoring of service performance. 

Service Availability

  • The Service is hosted in the Campus VMware cluster which has high reliability and availability.
  • We strive to achieve a 98% up-time and in 2014 we achieved a 99.5% up-time.
  • Changes to the VM to support additional load requirements (CPU, RAM, HD) can be made with minimal disruption 
  • System patches are applied on the 3rd Wednesday of each month between 5:30-7:30 AM unless an immediate security patch is required, then it will be applied ASAP.  
  • All major changes to the service will be communicated and document to the stakeholders.

Monitoring and Statistics

  • TS will provide server 24/7/365 monitoring for the mailing list service
  • TS will provide statistical information to the customer on a per-request basis. 

Periodic Review

This Agreement is is valid from <DATE> and is valid until further notice.  This Agreement should be reviewed once per year by both parties and if necessary updated, however, in lieu of a review the current Agreement will remain in effect. 

The Technology Services Group will take the responsibility to facilitate a review if service levels or business conditions change and the content of this document may be amended as required provided mutual agreement is obtained and communicated to the Customer.  

Cost of Service

TBD – a shared cost recovery model for all mailing list servers is being discussed by management.