Intro to Google Discussion Groups

David L. Rager

Joining the Discussion Group

  1. Sign into your GMail/Google account. If you don't want to do this, skip the rest of this section and email your TA requesting that they send your non-gmail account an invitation to join the Google group. This will allow you to post with that non-Google email address.
  2. Goto the web Google Group view of the discussion group. The exact address varies depending on name of the class and year, but it will be something like http://groups.google.com/group/utexas-cs313k-spring2010. In the following instructions all references to that group name and course should be understood to refer to the actual group name and course.
  3. Since you've signed in, you should see a "Join this group" option in the right panel. Click that link, choose the format for mail delivery (I recommend the email option with filtering, and then click the "Join this group" button.

Creating a GMail Filter

Since these discussion lists are created with the idea of students using Gmail accounts to read them (although it's not necessary), I put together a brief how-to for creating a filter for this email list in the Gmail application. I personally find the process rather intuitive, so this explicit list is probably unnecessary, but I thought I'd send it out just in case some people get lost in the new technology.

  1. Open GMail
  2. Click on the "Settings" hyperlink at the top right of your screen
  3. Click on the "Filters" hyperlink near the top middle of your screen (it's the fourth link in the submenu)
  4. Scroll down to the bottom and click on the hyperlink for "Create a new filter"
  5. Enter "utexas-cs313k-spring2010@googlegroups.com" in the "TO:" box of the new filter
  6. Click on the button labeled "Test Search" and if you've been in the group for awhile, you should see some hits
  7. Click on the button labeled "Next Step"
  8. Check the checkbox labeled "Also apply to the X conversations below" (where X is a number)
  9. In an effort to keep my inbox clean, I like to check the checkbox labeled "Skip the inbox (Archive it)", but it's just a personal preference
  10. Check the checkbox labeled "Apply the label"
  11. Use the scroll box near the "Apply the label" checkbox and select "new label"
  12. Type in a name for the label. I used cs313k
  13. Click OK to create a label of that name.
  14. Click on the button labeled "Create Filter"

You can now also access the discussion group emails by clicking on the cs313k link in the "Labels" section of your gmail client on the bottom left portion of the browser page.

Index

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