EMail Parrot Administrator Documentation

Administrator Login

The “Sign In” page allows for existing admins to log in and for the creation of new admin log-ins. If you don’t already have an EMail Parrot admin account you can create one by selecting the “Create An EMail Parrot Account” link.  

You, as an administrator, should now be able to log into the EMail Parrot administrative web page - https://emparrot.com/admin.  Your password will be saved into the system and will be the only verification needed for future access to the admin pages.

Note: Marking a member as an admin within a distribution list does not grant them access to the administrator web page.  Members marked as administrators in the distribution list will be part of the admin.<list>@emparrot.com sublist.  For a member to have access to the web administrator page so that they can manage list membership, they will need to create a login using the same email address as they use in an email list.  

Administrator Page

As an administrator you will have access to all the information for all the email distribution lists you are marked as an “admin”.  To select which email list you want to manage, enter its name in the box at the top of the page.

List Creation and Deletion

In the upper right of the page is the “Account” pull down menu.  This menu allows you to create a new EMail Parrot email list, delete an existing EMail Parrot email list, or log out from the site.  

• To create a new email list select “Create New Email List” on the “Account” pull down menu.  

• You will then need to provide list details and payment information.  Credit card information is stored as an encrypted token for security but this means that credit card information will need to be reentered at the creation of every email list.  Only 1 token is stored per web login so the latest entered credit card will be used for all email list charges for each unique web login.
• The creator (web login) of an email list is designated as the “owner” of the email list.  
• The email address of the “owner” will be automatically added as a member of the email list and marked as an admin by default.

• To delete an email list select “Delete Email List” on the “Account” pull down menu.

• The email list in the “Email Distribution List Name” dialog box will be deleted by this operation.
• Only the list owner can delete an email list and they must also be marked as a list admin.  
• This action cannot be undone, so make sure that you are deleting the correct email list if you have several.  
• All other email list administration tasks below can be done by any list admin identified in the list.

Updating an Email List

Enter the email list name in the “Email Distribution List Name” dialog box at the top of the page.  This identifies the email list that is being acted upon. By pressing enter after inputting the list name will launch a ‘list membership’ action.

There are 6 tabs in the lower part of the administrator page for the different actions that can be performed.

List Membership

By pressing ENTER or clicking on the first tab below (“List Membership”) the membership of the list will be displayed. As admin you have access to the email addresses of the members so treat your group’s information as personal and private.

A email list contains 6 pieces of information about each member of the list:

1. Email address - the email address of the member. Each email address in this table is a hyperlink that will open the “Add/Update/Delete” tab with this email address prepopulated.
2. Name - the name to be used when identifying the sender of an email.  This field can be any text string and should identify the member sufficiently for other members.  It can be the person’s real name but can be any string that is useful to your group.

1. EMail Parrot supports direct email messaging (DM) and the email addresses of users are derived from this name field.  As such names entered should allow for valid email addresses to be derived. Valid email addresses can have alphanumeric characters, spaces, and any of the following characters - #$%&*+-/?^_{|} -  However, email service providers may not respect the RPC specification so some testing may be needed when adding special characters to a user’s name field.
2. EMail Parrot does not check if each member email has a unique “name” as having duplicates can be useful.  When a DM email is received it will be delivered to all members whose “name” field matches the DM address.  

3. Admin - this True/False flag indicates which members of the group are the designated administrators.  The sublist admin.<list>@emparrot.com is defined for all EMamil Parrot distribution lists and includes all email list members marked as admin.  Unlike other sublists any member can email the admin sublist.
4. Moderate - this True/False flag indicates if this member’s emails need to be approved by an administrator before be sent to the full distribution list
5. Self Email - this True/False flag indicates if the member’s emails will be sent to the sender as well as the other members of the distribution list.  While most people do not want to see an “echo” of the emails they send some desire to see their emails in their inbox.
6. No Email - No emails will be sent to this address.  The use-case for this is when a member has multiple email addresses they wish to send from but do not want to receive multiple copies of each email.  This allows all of a member’s email addresses to be in the group as valid senders to the group.
7. Sublists - this field is a list of sublists that each member belongs to.  Sublist names cannot contain spaces, commas, periods nor many other special characters so it is advisable to only use lowercase letters, numbers, dashes, and underscores.

Managing Email Lists with CSV files

When managing large email groups a web interface may not be the best choice.  To enable easier bulk changes list definitions can be made in a CSV file and imported to EMail Parrot.  The first step is to download your email list membership into a CSV file on your computer with the “Download Member Information as CSV” button.  This will create a file in your browser’s download area named the same as your email list with the “.csv” file extension.  

You can edit this file to make changes to your list using a spreadsheet application or a simple text editor.  Be sure to save your changes as a “.csv” file and not in your spreadsheet application’s default file format.  The columns of the file represent the data fields used by the web interface.  For multiple sublist membership entry use double quotes as these sublists need to be comma separated but since the CSV file also uses commas to separate columns, the sublist information needs to be double quoted to prevent confusion.  Example:

In spreadsheet application:

As a text file:

email,name,sublist,list_admin,self_email,nomail,moderate

my_email@gmail.com,John Doe,"sublist1, sublist2",false,false,false,false

To import the modified membership information into EMail Parrot, select whether you just modify member information contained in the CSV file or, by checking the “Replace All Members on Upload” option, have the system remove all members not listed in the CSV file.  Be careful when using this option as email entries may be removed from your list. Click the “Upload CSV File” and select the file containing the membership information.  Once you click “OK” on the file selection the file will be uploaded and the information processed into EMail Parrot.

Add/Update/Delete Member

This tab is used to add a member to a distribution list or to modify the information of an existing member or to delete the member from the distribution list.  An email address must be in the box adjacent to the label “Enter Email Address to Add/Update/Delete”.  This email address may be pre-populated from the “List Membership” tab or entered manually.

EMail Parrot is email address based and each member is unique based on their email address.  If the email address of a member needs to be changed the new email address will need to be added and the old email address deleted from the list.

If the email address entered is for an already existing member the remaining fields can be populated with this member’s current information by clicking the “Lookup Member Information” button.  This is helpful when updating one piece of a member’s information, eliminating the need manually to fill in all the fields.

To add or update the information for a member all 5 pieces of information must be provided to perform this action.  The member’s data will be changed for all fields when the “Add/Update Member” button is clicked so add input data should be reviewed before clicking.

Updating / adding a member’s information requires that a valid email address be entered and that the “Name” (personal identifier) be entered as well.  The settings for “admin”, “self_email”, and “moderate” should be reviewed as these default to “false”. Sublist can be left blank as it is not required for a member to also be part of a sublist.

Each member can belong to any number of sublists by entering a comma separated list of sublist names.  An EMail Parrot sublist distribution can be emailed by adding the sublist name and a period to the distribution list’s email address - <sublist>.<list>@emparrot.com. Since sublists are part of an email address they must conform to valid email address specifications and are case insensitive.  Therefore a sublist name cannot contain spaces, commas, periods and many other special characters so it is advisable to only use lowercase letters, numbers, dashes, and underscores.

If a sublist name begins with a caret, “^”, then the sublist is defined as private and only members of the sublist can send to the sublist.  For all other sublists any member of the larger distribution list may send emails to the sublist.  Only members of the sublist will receive the email and if they reply to such an email the non-sublist member that sent the original email to the sublist will NOT receive the reply.  A direct email should be used in this case to reply to the non-sublist member.  

If an email address needs to be removed from the distribution this action can be performed on this tab.  Simply provide the member’s email address in the top box and click “Delete Member”.  There is no “undo” for this action and if done by mistake the member’s information will need to be reentered.

Group Info

At the top of the “Group Info” tab is a summary of the current month’s activity to date. Number of email deliveries and GB sent are provided and updated every 15 minutes.

Each email group can have different properties and sublists will inherit these same properties as the main email group.  These configurations allow for customization of behavior for your group.

• Update List Common Name: The list common name sets the name that recipients see in the FROM field.  This is set when the email list is created but at times it may be desired to modify this text.  This field is used to update the “list common name”.
• Disable Direct User-to-User Emails: By default EMail Parrot enables the ability for any member of a list to directly email another member directly.  In some situations the list administrators do want to allow for direct emailing through the system.  If you wish to prevent your list members from directly emailing each other, set this option to ‘True’.
• Allow CC/BCC: By default EMail Parrot does not allow emails to be delivered unless the group email address is in the TO: field of the email.  Sometimes SPAMmers BCC a large group of email addresses and not allowing CC or BCC addressing of the group can improve security.  Some group owners want to allow CC and BCC addressing of the group and this option allows it.
• Allow Auto-Forwarding: By default EMail Parrot does not allow emails to be delivered if the original sender isn’t a member of the email group.  In some cases it is desirable to create an auto-forward on an email account that forwards to EMail Parrot.  If this option is enabled and the email account performing the auto-forward is a member of the email group, EMail Parrot will deliver the email to the group, subgroup, or direct main address.
• Strip External Content: By default EMail Parrot will strip external content from emails that pass through the system.  Tracking Pixels and other tracking information is collected through external content and most do not want to enable tracking of the members of the email list.  This will remove content from some emails when these emails reference data from external sources.  Pictures included in emails or web links will not be affected.
• For additional protection from harmful attachments, EMail Parrot can be directed to evaluate the “Content Type” information of attachments.  Some attacks can send an executable attachment with a “.pdf” file extension but set the “Content Type” to “application” in hopes that a poorly written email client will run the program.  To prevent this EMail Parrot can be configured to remove all “application” attachments based on the “Content Type” listed in the email.  Be advised that this check relies on email clients marking safe attachments with the correct “Content Type”.  Simpler email clients don’t bother to set this correctly leading to this option removing safe attachments.
• Remove Archive File Attachments: By default EMail Parrot will remove attachments that are executable programs or file archives from emails that pass through the system.  Executable files are a clear security threat and will always be removed.  Archive files, like .zip files, can contain threats inside of them.  Some groups may want to exchange archive files so the removal of archives can be disabled by setting this field to “False”. It is recommended that this isn’t done unless truly necessary as doing so increases risk to group members.
• Allow non-member email: A core element of EMail Parrot is that email groups are private and only members can have emails delivered by it.  By enabling “allow non-member email” this basic check is bypassed.  In some rare cases this may be desirable but doing so should be done with extreme caution as anyone, anywhere can email the group if this option is set.  This can expose group members to unwanted emails and phishing attacks. We strongly advise against using this option.
• We understand that some groups do not want to have any copies of their emails saved on EMail Parrot systems.  By default EMail Parrot keeps a copy of emails sent through the system for 30 days to allow for resending of emails if needed.  By selecting the “Immediate Deletion of Sent Emails” option EMail Parrot will delete the email file as soon as all the member emails are sent.  Quarantined emails will still be save for up to 30 days so that your list administrators can determine the correct disposition of these emails
• Max Email Size: By default EMail Parrot set the maximum email size to 1MB as this ensures that no data usage charges will be applied to the group’s invoice and improve the speed of email delivery.  Some groups desire the ability to send larger attachments and this can be configured by this setting.  However sending a large number of emails of greater than 1MB in size can incur data overage charges. The absolute maximum email size is 10MB as this is the lowest email size limit of the major ISPs and email providers.  

• Email group administrators are required to maintain a maximum email size limit such that email can be delivered to ALL group members.  Sending emails to a group member that cannot be received is impolite and is adverse to the operation of EMail Parrot.  Such issues must be addressed by the group administrator in a timely manner or service will be suspended.

List Quarantined Emails

Emails will be quarantined by the systems for a number of reasons:  

• Email from moderated member
• Email too large (>1MB)
• Email received from a non-member

Quarantined emails are listed in a table with the ID, Reason, Date, Sender, and Email Subject of the emails.  The ID text for each listed email is a hyperlink and will pre-populate the identifier on the “Manage Quarantined Emails” tab to enable easier management of the email.

Checkboxes are also provided next to each quarantined email so that rapid deletion of emails with known causes can be performed.  When clicking the “Delete Selected Quarantined Emails” all emails that are checked will be deleted.

Manage Quarantined Emails

Administrators may wish to look at the email to see its contents.  To enable this a “Download” button is provided.  Clicking this button will open a new browser tab and display the raw email.  Note that very large emails may break this download function.

There are several dispositions can be performed on quarantined emails:

• Delete - delete the email
• Reprocess - allow the email to proceed to the group members
• Contact the sender - this action will be covered in the next section of this document “Send Admin Email”

Reprocessing the email will require some additional information so that the email won’t be quarantined a second time.  At a minimum the check that the email failed will need to be disabled during the reprocessing.  

• To allow an email from a moderated member to proceed the “Override Moderate” checkbox will need to be selected.  The “Reprocess Quarantined Email” button can be clicked allowing the email to proceed to the members.
• To allow an over-sized email to proceed the “Override Size Check” checkbox will need to be selected and “Reprocess Quarantined Email” button clicked.  NOTE: The various email systems used today have different allowable email size limits ranging from 6MB to 25MB.  Reprocessing extremely large emails will likely not be delivered due to size checks on other systems.
• To allow an email from a non-member or for a member’s email to a sublist they do not belong to be reprocessed through the system the “Override Membership Check” checkbox will need to be selected.  Additionally if the email is from a non-member and since the email address is not known to the system a “Name” will need to be provided so that the system knows what to prepend to the email to identify the sender.  Generally it is not advisable to process non-member emails through the system as they are unknown to the members and will not receive replies.  The “Reprocess Quarantined Email” will need to be clicked to perform this action.
• Additionally it may be desirable to reprocess the email but only send it to the administrators of the list.  The “Send Only to Admins” checkbox enables this reduced distribution of the quarantined email followed by clicking “Reprocess Quarantined Email”.

Send Admin Email

At times it may be necessary to email addresses (not an EMail Parrot distribution list) such as when validating a request to join.   However, you may not want to send these emails from your personal email address.  Simple, text only emails can be sent to any email address with the sender being “admin.<email_list>@emparrot.com” with this action.  

Alternatively it may be desired that an email is send to all list members from the “admin.<email_list>@emparrot.com” address.  This can be done by selecting the “BCC All” checkbox instead of entering an email address.  Doing this can be used to set group rules and guidelines.

Lastly, since each member of the email list has a unique direct email address that can be used by group members to send individually addressed emails, it may be desired to publish all members’ direct email addresses to everyone in the email list.  The “Send Address Book” button at the bottom of this tab performs this action.

Bugs, Errors and Documentation Issues

These administration functions are complex and the permutations of issues extensive.  There are likely issues to be resolved.  Please clearly describe any issues you encounter and send to admin@emparrot.com.

Return to https://emparrot.com/admin