On the morning of 8th November, Yahoo! Groups will down for 30
minutes for a system upgrade. During that time the website will be
unavailable but email to groups will be queued for delivery later.
We are making the following upgrades to the Yahoo! Groups product:

1) New Email Format
2) Grouping Messages by Topic (Message Threading)
3) Advanced Search Functionality
4) Automatic Spam Suppression
5) Integration with Yahoo! Answers

1) New Email Format: Learn more about it here http://help.
yahoo.com/ help/uk/groups/ email/

The default message format for Groups email will change to a new,
two column structure called the "fully featured" format. We have also
upgraded the daily digest to make the index clickable and to sort
messages by subject as well as chronologically to make it possible
for
users to read only the topics they are interested in and to skip the
rest.

We are also maintaining the "Traditional" Groups email format, so
users
will have the option to choose the format that works best for them.

2) Grouping Messages by Topic (Message Threading): Learn more about
it
here http://help. yahoo.com/ help/uk/groups/ messages/

The new "group by topic" feature (or "Topic View") in the Messages
section and on the Group Home Page enables users to find all the
posts
in a specific conversation (or thread) together.

3) The advanced search functionality: Learn more about it here
http://help. yahoo.com/ help/uk/groups/ search/

The core search functionality has been upgraded. It will now search
the
entire message archive of a group, no matter how many messages have
been
posted, faster and comprehensively.

4) Support for Spam filtering: Learn more about it here
http://help. yahoo.com/ help/uk/groups/ spamfilter/

Yahoo! Groups already routes all message through our SpamGuard spam
identification and tags messages identified as potential spam. Now,
these messages will no longer be posted automatically in unmoderated
groups. Instead, they will be put in a special "Pending Spam" folder
where a group owner or moderator can review and either approve or
delete the message.

5) Yahoo! Answers Integration: Learn more about it here
http://help. yahoo.com/ help/uk/groups/ answers/

Groups will be integrating with Yahoo! Answers through an "Answers
Module" that will appear on the Group Home Page. Groups will have the
ability to choose the specific Answers category that is most
relevant to
their group. And as with all functionality on Groups today, it is the
owner/moderator of the group that gets to decide whether an
application appears in the group at all.

Please alert your group members to these changes, so they are not
surprised by either the downtime or the new functionalities.

Thank you,

- Yahoo! Groups