You don’t need to “log on” to the Commons to respond to group email notifications.  Participate in group discussions by simply clicking Reply in your email client.  Our plugin Reply By Email takes care of the rest!

Respond to personal messages in the same way, and in both cases, you can attach files, and those files will be available to your group or friend.

You can even post a new topic via email.  Make sure you send from the email address shown in your Commons settings and use the group’s quick link appended by “@groups.commons.gc.cuny.edu.”  For example, if the group’s quick link is cuny.is/omeka, post your topic to:  “cuny.is/omeka@groups.commons.gc.cuny.edu”.  The  subject line will become the new topic’s title. Depending upon your group’s email settings, your new topic can trigger notifications to group members.

A Few Caveats

• When you receive a Commons email notification, you’ll notice the phrase “— Reply ABOVE THIS LINE to add a comment —“ (circled in red, above). Anything you type above this line will be part of the message posted to the forum, while everything below this line will be ignored But it is vital that the line itself be present in the reply. Reply By Email uses this info to route your reply back to the Commons. (Depending on your email client, when you hit reply, you might see additional address information added. Don’t worry – this will not be part of your response.)

• You must reply using the same email address at which you received the notification – Reply By Email uses this as a way of matching you up with your Commons username. (Not an issue for most people, but it may affect those who have set up their email client with multiple email addresses.)

• You can use Reply by Email to reply to discussion threads on group forums, to personal messages and @mentions, and to group announcements.

• Attachments are allowed for group forum emails.  To attach a file, use the familiar method provided by your email client.  Our attachment size limit is 3MB. Keep in mind that you cannot attach files for daily or weekly group digest emails.
  You can also tell if attachments are allowed by checking the email footer:
  

• You cannot use Reply by Email to reply to notification “digests,” Docs notifications (new docs, edited docs, new comments), group file uploads, group invites, or friendship requests.

See here for further technical details.