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Bath CS Wiki

Publicising Events

Emails

We need to send emails via both the department and the SU, such that everyone gets them. A lot of computer science students show up to our events despite not being members, so it’s important to include everyone. However, we don’t want to send the same email to anyone twice. We send emails to all computer science students via the Directors of Studies/Teaching, and then to all remaining members via the SU website.

Using the templating system

  1. Download the templating tool

    1. Install PHP 8 (command line setup) and Python 3
    2. Download the latest .zip file from su-mail releases
    3. Extract the downloaded file into a folder

  2. Create an email

    1. Copy one of the existing emails from the emails folder and increment the number in the filename
    2. Edit the content of the email
    3. Make sure to put rel="noopener noreferer" when using <a> tags

  3. Generate the email

    1. Run python main.py emails/xyz.json
    2. The email’s HTML should be in your clipboard as well as output in the terminal

Via the SU

The committee web tools document has a detailed explanation of how to send an email via the SU website. It also has some basic debugging steps.

For BCSS, the process is slightly more complicated. We don’t want to send emails to any Computer Science students via the SU, as they will receive the email from the Directors of Studies/Teaching. The SU doesn’t have any way to filter these, so it has to be done manually, following these steps:

  1. Download the exclusion tool

    1. Download the latest .jar file from the su-exclude releases page found here
    2. Ensure you have Java Runtime 1.8 or higher installed

  2. Download the sales report

    1. Open the SU’s sales report page.

    2. Set the Start date to 01/08/YYYY (where YYYY is set so that 01/08/YYYY is within the last year). Make sure that the End date is in the future (this should be the default).

    3. Click Purchasers report.

    4. Scroll down and click the Save icon:

      Save button to the left of a printer icon

    5. Select XML file with report data:

      Text in the center showing XML file with report data

    6. Download and save the XML file in your Downloads folder.

  3. Connect to the Intranet

    1. Either go to campus and connect to eduroam, or
    2. Connect to the University VPN

  4. Run the tool

    1. Put the downloaded JAR and downloaded XML in the same folder/directory
    2. Open a command prompt/terminal in that folder/directory
    3. Run java -jar suexclude-<VERSION>.jar "Product Purchasers Report (System).xml" --deduplicate --include-product 10000610 --exclude-ou DEP-COMP, adjusting filenames as necessary. This step can take a long time to complete, please be patient! If it hangs, you probably forgot to connect the VPN/connect eduroam on campus. If the VPN is connected or you are on the campus Intranet, then please just wait, it will load eventually!
    4. Copy the output to the clipboard (it should be valid JavaScript, otherwise there was an error).

  5. Delete the report file

    1. Make sure to delete the Product Purchasers Report from your computer.
    2. Clear the recycle bin!

  6. Set recipients

    1. Open the SU messages page.
    2. Create or open a draft.
    3. Click Add recipients.
    4. Open DevTools using Ctrl+Shift+C.
    5. If necessary, press Escape to show the JavaScript console.
    6. Paste the output of the tool into the JavaScript console prompt.
    7. Close DevTools.
    8. Click Add recipients.

  7. Clear your clipboard

    1. Copy some non-confidential text.
    2. If you use a clipboard manager, make sure to clear that too.

  8. Write your email

    1. Paste the HTML from the templator into the Source input.
    2. Click Save as draft.
    3. Once ready, let another committee member double-check your email.
    4. Send the same email via the Director of Studies/Teaching and wait for them to forward it.
    5. Once the Director of Studies/Teaching have sent it, disable Google Campaign Tracking then click Send on the SU page.

Debugging:

  1. If Java throws an error not related to the tool, debug it using your favourite search engine.
  2. If the only output is var r=null; then you downloaded the wrong report, or set the wrong date range.

Via the Director of Studies/Teaching

Send an email to Zack Lyons or John Benardis, both are happy to send (relevant) emails to the entire department. Zack is often really busy so John has been more responsive lately. It is worth noting Fabio sends emails targetted at PG-T students.

  1. Ensure the email HTML is in your clipboard by running the templator.

  2. Open Outlook on the Web.

  3. Compose a new email to Zack Lyons. ([email protected]) or John Benardis ([email protected]).

  4. Type an introduction just saying hi and asking them to forward the below email to students (specify whether it is for UG, PG-T or PG-R).

  5. Where you want the email to go, type the word “test”.

  6. Hold shift and right-click the word “test”.

  7. Click “inspect”. You should see something like this:

    HTML code, highlighting "div" with class "elementToProof"

  8. Right-click anywhere in the blue highlighted area (text “elementToProof”) and select “Edit as HTML”.

  9. Select the entire textbox and paste (replacing the existing content).

  10. Send the email.

  11. After the email has been forwarded to relevant students, make sure to click send on the SU page!

Discord

Instagram

  • Make sure that any Instagram posts have alt-text and a useful caption. Make sure that all information in the photo is duplicated in the caption.

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