Morning Mail

MorningMail aggregates news and event information from all over Rensselaer, and re-packages it for distribution to the campus community. Anatomy of a MorningMail.

MorningMail is regularly checking RSS & ATOM feeds on campus websites for updated news items. When you add a news item to your site, we'll distribute the headline and a snippet of the text. Every article we distribute links back to your site, driving traffic back to your site and to your organization. MorningMail reminds people that you are authoritative for your information.

Your news, announcement, event is now syndicated - you need to provide context. Your audience is probably a large segment of the campus community -make sure you include enough information for people outside your organization (for example, computing announcements should make sense to people outside DotCIO). Include enough contextual information so people can understand your news even when it isn't located on your website. For example, a headline of 'Team wins 3-0 over Union' only makes sense on the hockey site while 'RPI Hockey Blanks Union, 3-0' can be understood on any site. Remember that your information may travel far from its original home.

Rensselaer's public events calendar is the natural content repository for most MorningMail items. Most Rensserv postings are really calendar events. Post them to the calendar and they will be seen in the calendar, and everyplace that MorningMail syndicates content to. Individuals can download your event from the events calendar into their personal calendars. Events in the events calendar can be automatically embedded in your web pages. Once your event is in the events calendar, it is a candidate to become a "featured" event in the image panel at the top of the events calendar page.