Question/Problem Description
Resolution
Enable This List as a Child List
This setting determines if this mailing list will accept messages submitted directly from another mailing list.
This option is used to create parent/child mailing lists, where sending mail to a parent list automatically sends to a child mailing list.
A typical scenario for setting up parent/child list is if you have multiple announcement lists and they are related in this way. For example, these lists could be in a parent/child relationship:
sports-announcements
soccer-announcements
tennis-announcements
If lists are set up in a parent-child relationship, messages you send to "sports-announcements" can be sent to members of "soccer-announcements" and "tennis-announcements" automatically. Or, you may just want to send to "tennis-announcements" and not to any other list.
Here are the instructions for setting up a parent/child list. Please follow these directions carefully, as the relationship is a little difficult to grasp:
1. First, create your parent and child lists as you would create any ordinary lists (you will later establish the parent-child relation between them). You should not use message wrapping in any list that will act as a parent, as these header/footers will be reproduced when the messages are posted to the children.
2. For each child list, go to Utilities: List Settings: Basic Information: Enable Features, and set Enable This List as a Child List to Yes.
3. For each child list, go to Utilities: List Settings: Discussion Group Features: Message Rejection Rules: Same Message Rules and set Allow Duplicate Posting to No, Duplicate Postings Should Be Rejected.
4. For each child list, go to Utilities: List Settings: Discussion Group Features: Message Rejection Rules: Same Message Rules and set Allow Cross-Posting to Yes, Cross-Posted Messages Will be Allowed.
5. For each child list, go to Utilities: List Settings: Discussion Group Features: Message Rejection Rules: Same Message Rules and set Cross-Posting and Duplicates to Make Sure that Multiple Copies of Cross-Postings are Removed.
6. For each child list, go to Utilities: List Settings: Basic Information: Enable Features and set Archive Messages to Yes, save and archive messages sent on this mailing list.
7. Decide who should be able to post to your mailing lists and make them a member of all the lists (parents and children) that their message should be distributable to. A person has to be a member of the parent and all its children in order for the message to be distributed. You should also set the security permissions for this person so that their post goes through the security tests you decide. For instance, you may want to allow any post from the person to automatically be approved, in which case making this member a list admin on the lists is best.
8. In each list that is to serve as a parent list, subscribe to the child list's posting address as a member of the parent list. For example, you would create two members in "sports-announcements", with the email addresses "soccer-announcements@yourserver.com" and "tennis-announcements@yourserver.com". Child lists can also act as parents to other lists, so you can nest the parent/child relationship as deeply as you like.
If you have configured the lists to reject cross-posted duplicates, you will prevent members of multiple child lists from getting many copies when a message is sent via the parent list.
