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Subsections


10. Creating and editing mailing using the web

The mailing list management by list owners process is designed for web interface. It is based on strict definition of privileges of listmaster, main list owner and basic list owner. The goal is to allow each listmaster to define who can create a list and what parameter can be set by owners. Therefore, a complete installation need some effort on the configaration side, though defaults are acceptable for most sites.

Some features are allready available, others will be soon, this is mentioned in this documention.

10.1 List creation

Lismasters have all privileges. Currently it is defined in sympa.conf but in the future, it might be possible to define one listmaster per virtual robot. As the default behaviour, newly created lists are activated by listmaster ; list creation is available to any intranet user (ie : users with an email address within the same domain as Sympa). This is controlled by create_list scenario.

10.1.1 create_list scenario

This scenario can apply any condition about the [sender] (ie: WWSympa user), and it must return reject, do_it or listmaster. The "create" button is available from the main menu only if the user is allowed by the create_list scenario. If the scenario returns do_it, the list will be created and installed ; if it returns "listmaster", the user is allowed to create a list but the list is created with the pending status and only owner of the list can view or use it. In order to install or reject new list, the listmaster need to open the list of pending lists using the "pending list" button on the "server admin" menu. Then he can install or reject pending lists.

10.1.2 typical list profile

Many different usages are possible for mailing list. Sympa proposes a large set of parameters for each list in order to adapt the list's behaviour to any kind of usage. It may be difficult for users to choose any of the list parameters to define a list profile. So the create list form just asks the list creator to choose a profile for his/her list and complete it with owner email, list subject and short list description.

The list profiles can be stored in ~sympa/etc/create_list_templates or ~sympa/bin/etc/create_list_templates which come with Sympa's distribution and should not be modified. ~sympa/etc/create_list_templates which will not be overwritten by make install and is intended to contain site customization.

A list profile is nearly a list configuration but some fields such as owner email will be replaced by WWSympa et installation time. It is easy to create new list templates by modifying an existing one. Contributions to the distribution are welcome.

You might want to hide or modify profiles (unusefull or dangerous for your site). If a profile exists both in the local site directory ~sympa/etc/create_list_templates and ~sympa/bin/etc/create_list_templates directory, then the local profile will be used by WWSympa.

Another way to control publically available profiles is to edit create_list.conf file (the default for this file is in ~sympa/bin/etc/ directory and you can create one in ~sympa/etc/). This allows to list available list templates. Example :

# Dont allow the public_anonymous profile
public_anonymous hidden
* read

When a list is created, whatever is it's status pending or open, the owner can use WWSympa admin features to modify the list parameters (in futur version) or to edit welcome message and so on.

WSYympa keeps creation and modification authors and date in the list's config file (previous configuration file are saved).

10.1.3 creating list alias

Managing alias need root access and is depending on the local mail organization. So it'is not for sympa application tomodify and install aliases. We plans to introduce a plugin solution so anyone can write its own alias generation. Not yet available.


10.2 List edition

For each parameter, you can choose via ~sympa/etc/edit_list.conf configuration file who can edit list parameters ; the default ~sympa/bin/etc/edit_list.conf is reasonnably safe.

     examples :

         \# only listmaster can edit user\_data\_source, priority, ...
         user\_data\_source listmaster  

         priority listmaster
      
         \# only privileged owner can modify  editor parameter, send, ...
         editor privileged\_owner

         send privileged\_owner

         \# other parameters can be changed by simple owners
         default owner

Privileged owners are defined in list's config file as follows :

		owner
		email his@email
      		profile privileged

The following rules are hardcoded in wwsympa :

The goal is to define two trust level for owners (some can just edit gadget like "custom_subject", some others can edit important parameters, but keep control of crutial parameters like the list of privileged owners or user_data_sources. So owners can change there e-mail (asking to a privileged owner to do it), but they can't give away the list mangement responsability to someone else without refering to listmaster.


next up previous contents index
Next: 11. List configuration parameters Up: Sympa Mailing Lists Management Software Previous: 9. Mailing list definition   Contents   Index
root 2000-11-23