PSO Digital Communications Officer Handbook

  1. Attend all Professional Staff Organization and Officer Council meetings.
  2. The by-laws state that the PSO will meet as a group at least four times per year. Meetings generally run about an hour to an hour and a half in length.
  3. The by-laws state that the Officer Council will also meet at least four times per year. PSO Officer Council meetings are held to plan/prepare for each upcoming PSO meeting (agenda, guest speakers, etc.). Any other PSO related business between full membership meetings is also handled at these meetings. Follow up e-mail conversations are typically held as well to sustain business matters of PSO.
  4. Maintain and update the Professional Staff Organization website and member database.
  5. PSO website:

(See PSO Website Maintenance procedure)

  1. PSO-Voting website:

(See Nomination/Election procedure)

  1. Member Database:
  2. All members have been added to an Outlook distribution list and can be shared with the new Digital Communications Officer.
  3. Request a list of new or recently reclassified PSO members from HR. Use this list to update the contacts in the PSO distribution list.
    (See Maintaining Distribution List procedure)
  1. Send email notices of meetings, agenda items, and other points of information to all members via Professional Staff Organization email.
  2. The PSO Chair will notify the DCO when President’s Council meeting minutes are posted. The DCO will send an email containing a link to the President’s Council meeting minutes to all members of the PSO for review.
  3. Messages are sent via Outlook.
  4. Using the PSO distribution list, forward emails from Chair using the BCC feature of Outlook.
  5. As needed, replies can be re-directed to another PSO Officer or member by using the “Direct Replies To” option in a message.
  6. You can use the Mail Merge feature in Outlook to send customized emails to all or a portion of PSO members. This can include a welcome letter for new PSO members and/or the nomination notification during the spring.
  7. See Mail Merge Procedure and Example Welcome Letter
  8. Sending correspondence can take anywhere from 1 minute to 30 minutes depending on the topic. If a notice needs to be proofed prior to sending, then the task will take longer than if a message is ready to go. Typically at least one email is sent weekly.
  9. Perform other duties as assigned by the Chair or Officer Council.
  10. These may include but are not limited to: serving on committees, attending meetings, compiling responses from members, adding information to the website as an announcement, posting intranet announcements about PSO-related activities or surveying members about an upcoming policy or event.
  11. Update the PSO website. Access Umbraco at: Changes made to design or structure of Professional Staff Organization website must be approved by Officer Council.
  12. If you are unfamiliar with Umbraco, recorded training sessions are available at the following location:
  13. password: lcweb13
  14. CMS Training Part 1 -
  15. CMS Training Part 2 -
  16. Since PSO typically doesn’t have the first meeting until the fall semester, the summer is a good time to update the pages for the new year. Pages you will need to update include the home page, minutes, meeting agendas, and past officer councils. The PSO Committee Members page should be updated in the fall when new committee members have been solicited after the first PSO meeting. The process to update will probably take an hour or two and can be broken into steps depending on your schedule. Uploading minutes and agendas will take around 5–10 minutes and is done before and after each PSO meeting.
  17. Obtain election results from Professional Staff Organization website and communicate to Vice Chair for announcement at March meeting.
  18. This is typically the most involved responsibility for this position. Setting up the web pages and databases collectively will probably take about a day to complete, but the steps can be broken up into different days and times depending on your schedule. Work with Vice Chair on timeline of nomination/viewing/voting periods to ensure you will meet deadlines.

(See Nomination/Election Procedure)