Campus IT Communications Procedures & Guidelines

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Communication Flowchart

1. Request is made to Relationship Management (it-relationship-mgmt@mst.edu) for an announcement that includes pertinent details and timeline (actual or estimated).
2. Relationship Management works with individual
(or team) making request to gather additional information, determine the best channel for the announcement and to develop a draft.
3. Draft is circulated to all involved IT teams.
4. Requestor signs off on vetted draft and provides target distribution list* (if possible).
5. IT Relationship Management sends approved announcement via appropriate distribution channels. Customers are happy because we sent them useful information that was relevant and targeted to their technology needs.

*The Relationship Management team tries to be sensitive to the campus perception that IT spams inboxes with announcements. While some issues are of such a nature that they require one or more all campus announcements, targeted lists are always the preferred method of communicating IT related issues. 

If you submit an announcement request, be prepared to receive a call from IT Relationship Management asking for answers to one or more of the following questions:

  1. The five Ws – Who? What? When? Where? Why?
  2. How will this affect IT customers?
  3. What percentage of campus will be affected by this?
  4. Can this announcement be sent to an existing email list or a list that can be easily created based on the current project information?
  5. Is this issue important enough (has large scale impact to campus business) that it requires an all campus email or more than one alert or reminder

Additional general communications guidelines:

  1. Relationship Management has an open door policy regarding questions and concerns about the when and where a particular announcement is distributed.  We welcome your feedback and will be happy to discuss our procedures on a case-by-case basis.
  2. Announcements generated from Change Management will generally be posted to IT Press by the Tuesday proceeding the change date.  Please contact Relationship Management if something needs to be communicated sooner.
  3. While emergencies are unavoidable, please give Relationship Management as much lead time as possible to collect data, determine communications channels and wordsmith before sending out an announcement. For more information regarding lead-time requirements, please visit http://wiki.mst.edu/itcomm/lead-time_requirements.

Communications Contact and Internal Escalation Information

  1. All day-to-day communications needs should be sent to it-relationship-mgmt@mst.edu. If immediate assistance is required, please call the primary contact person, then the secondary if necessary. The primary and secondary contacts will escalate day-to-day communications needs to management on an as needed basi
  2. After hours/emergency communications needs should always be directed to the emergency contact.


Primary Contact - Matt Shaner

  • 341-4376 - Office
  • 201-6505 - Cell

Secondary Contact - Lesley Cotita

  • 341-7990 - Office
  • 465-0417 - Cell

Emergency Contact - Chris Dew

  • 341-7914 - Office
  • 578-9615 - Cell
  • 299-4183 - Home

Customer communication channels used by IT:

  • Campus eConnection
  • Missouri Miner newspaper
  • KMST radio
  • IT Press blog
  • Targeted emails
  • All campus emails
  • Printed marketing collateral -- posters, postcards, etc.
  • IT website announcements, buttons and special content pages
  • One-on-one phone call