The Student Government has collaborated with the Ministry of Technology (TechMin) to release a new emailing tool, the ‘SG Compose.’ Introduced on 29 September and hosted on the SG website, the goal of the new platform is simple – to make the Ashokan email experience smoother and more visually appealing.
Ashokan’s are no strangers to overburdened email inboxes. The existing system has been far from ideal, with some students waiting almost a week for the Student Government (SG) to forward their emails. Organisation has been close to impossible, with readers subjected to hordes of emails with “Fwd” in their titles, and long dotted “forwarded message” paragraphs. Unorganised spam and wasted email real-estate has been the norm.
SG Compose aims to solve these existing issues by easing the process of sending, receiving, and organising cross-batch emails. It allows students to:
Categorise their emails into one of seven email types:
Choose which section of the student body they need to send it to:
The Rich Text Editor (RTE) also allows for “flexible content creation.” Email text can now be formatted (with bold, italics, bullet points, headings, etc). Irrelevant forwarded content such as subject, headers, and dates have also been removed allowing for a “cleaner, more readable mail.” Jacob Mathew (UG‘25) told The Edict that Aamer [Jalan] (UG‘25) and him “created and designed the font end and user interface,” and also “ideated how to implement it.” Asked about the process, Jacob says “it took around one week” to build.
The Edict found that many students have started using SG Compose. Diya Sandhir (UG ’27), used SG Compose for conducting a survey, and attests to a smoother experience. Her survey emails were forwarded to the entire student body within an hour of her raising a request via SG Compose, marking a significant improvement from previous send-times.
Post-release, the SG email address is no longer the liaison between the student body and email senders. Ibrahim Khalil, the Minister of Technology, has confirmed that the SG now rejects emails sent to them, and redirects requests to SG Compose. Students like Diya were unaware of SG Compose until they were redirected.
Diya’s redirection, however, also indicates that the student body is not completely familiar with the feature yet. So far, there have only been two emails that communicate the introduction of SG Compose.
Raghav Mehra (UG '28) had a different experience with the feature. He knew that SG Compose was being used, and had sent a request to the SG to approve his email. However, he was not notified of the “approval” of his email and only came to know much later, when he received it in his own inbox.
Previous email forwarding guidelines are still applicable. Prachet Sinha (UG‘ 26), a member of the House of Representatives (HoR) and responsible for forwarding student emails, spoke with The Edict. According to him, the procedure entails an SG or HoR member receiving the request to forward the email, checking if it follows SG Email forwarding guidelines, and then simply “accepting” the request and forwarding it to the student body, or rejecting the request.
On emails that cannot be approved under SG Email forwarding guidelines, Ibrahim Khalil (UG '26), Minister of Technology, told The Edict that the Ministry plans to “add improvements.” Previously, HoR members could not edit the automated rejection emails sent out when a forward request was denied. Now, the email will outline the reasons for rejection and other relevant information. This update has been live since 21st October.
The MoT also plans to introduce contingency measures for potential crashes. Ibrahim said that they are “there hasn't been any downtime to the entire SG platform since inception.” He elaborated, however, that implementing safeguards against potential crashes is still “definitely a part of the plan.”
(Edited by Fatema Tambawalla and Jyotsna Siddharth; Cartoon by Anandi Gupta.)
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