Setting up public conferences About public conferences and other public containers Where public conferences are located Controlling access to and activity in conferences Preserving the default conference view Hiding unapproved items in conferences Tips for conference permissions Publishing conferences Using unpublished conferences and workspaces Making conferences unlisted Renaming conferences Using mail rules to administer conferences Creating conferences on other volumes About public conferences and other public containers FirstClass users use containers such as conferences, folders, and workspaces to collaborate. You can create public containers for your users to use, and, if you give them the right privileges, they can also create and administer their own containers. General information about these containers, including how to create them, is included in Client Help. By default, a conference inherits the permissions of the conference within which it was created. (Folders, on the other hand, don't inherit these permissions, but they do inherit the view properties of the parent container.) Conferences can be shared with other FirstClass servers over gateways, and can offer access to Internet newsgroups through NNTP, as described in the Internet Services help. If you want groups of users, or individual users, to be able to create conferences, make sure they have the "Share conferences" privilege on the Group Privileges or User Information form. Where public conferences are located You create monitored conferences that are used by selected groups of users in the General Conferences folder on the administrator’s Desktop. This folder is only visible to you and your subadministrators. As administrator, you make selected conferences within this folder visible to the appropriate users or groups by granting memberships, adding them to model Desktops, or placing a link to a conference in a public place. When you install FirstClass, there are some conferences already created in the General Conferences folder. These conferences can be used as they are, customized, or deleted to create a structure that best fits your organization. When installing a new system, you can run a one-time script to customize the conferences in the General Conferences folder. After installing your new system, log in as administrator and open the Start Here conference on the administrator's Desktop. In the Groups and Conferences area there is a form with instructions to walk you through the renaming of these items. This script can only be run once. The existing conferences match the Department groups of the default network store. There is a collaboration area (conference) for each Department group. Inside each of the preconfigured conferences is a message archive folder to move old messages to instead of simply deleting them, and a group calendar for all users to contribute to. You can add as many conferences to this folder as you wish, and you can add as many subconferences within each conference as you require. Top Controlling access to and activity in conferences You give a user access to a public conference by placing a link to the conference on that user's Desktop or in a public area he can access. The link will be in the same location on the user's Desktop as the original. The user can move it where he wants. You can place links on Desktops by making users members or by using bulk methods for handling multiple users at once (model Desktops and FirstClass scripting). Membership is described in Client Help. The bulk methods are described later in this help.         Tip If you want others to be able to make people members, but don't want them to be able to open the conference's permissions form, you can provide a toolbar button, Add Person, for them. When they click this button, the Directory opens and they can select the members. Add Person creates a Roster folder in the parent container. You can change this name. A list of users who have access to the parent container is captured in the Members list. When using Add Person, if the container has the "Requires messages to be approved" permission enabled at the container or group level, the user is added unapproved. To add the Add Person button to the conference's toolbar, open the Customize Toolbars form and choose Collaborate at "Category". Preserving the default conference view When users open a conference, they can adjust the view. For example, they may sort on a different column or hide the top pane. If you want to ensure that the view you set for a conference is always the default view when users open the conference, select the "Use view from server" or "Use template view only" checkbox on the Permissions form. Both of these settings prevent users from saving their view properties for a container. Server view refers to the view properties set for the container and template view refers to the view properties set for the container template. Container templates are described later in this help. So if, for instance, Roy Allen likes to sort his containers by Name. But the administrator has configured the Management's group of containers sort on "Last modified date" and has selected to "Use template view only". Roy opens a container, customizes it as he likes and closes it. When he reopens the container, it's automatically back to the way the administrator designed it. Roy cannot make his view preferences stick in the container. Hiding unapproved items in conferences Conferences can be set to require message or attachment approval. Users can't open unapproved messages. Because this can be an annoyance to users, you may want to ensure they don't see unapproved messages. These messages will still be visible to anyone with the "Approve items" permission. To hide unapproved items, select "Hide unapproved items" on the conference's Permissions form. Tips for conference permissions As the last entry in the access section, it is good practice to enter "All Users" in the Who field and select "Disallowed" for the access. This ensures that no unauthorized users who have accessed the system can access your conferences and the information in them. If a user adds a link to a conference on his home page, it is then accessible by anyone who accesses the home page. Disallowing All Users ensures that only authorized users can follow the link and open the conference. Top Publishing conferences By default, all conferences are automatically set to unpublished when they are created. Unpublished conferences do not appear in the Directory, even the administrator's Directory. For this reason, mail can't be addressed to unpublished conferences (but can be created from within the conference). Because they are not in the Directory, there are no duplicate name conflicts associated with unpublished conferences. To publish a conference to the Directory: 1       Open the conference's Permissions form. 2       Clear "Do not publish in Directory".         Note If a deleted conference is undeleted, the conference will become unpublished. Using unpublished conferences and workspaces Unpublished conferences are useful for administrators who do not want to restrict users from creating conferences, but at the same time do not want large numbers of user-made conferences cluttering up the Directory. These conferences will not show up in the Directory under any circumstances, not even the administrator's Directory. This gives them an advantage over unlisted conferences, which can be seen by the administrator and users with the "View unlisted" privilege. Because they never appear in the Directory, unpublished conferences also provide an added level of security. Only members of the conference are able to post to it, by creating a new message from the conference window. No other mail can be received, either locally or over the Internet. An added benefit to unpublished conferences is that the conference name doesn't have to be unique. Since none of the conferences show up in the Directory, you can give multiple conferences the same name (useful for multiple classes). All containers in shared workspaces are unpublished. This provides security as well as making your system less congested with miscellaneous conference, and makes it easier for users to create and name their own objects. Because workspace containers are not seen in the Directory and cannot receive mail, only users who are members of a workgroup can see or post messages to a workspace conference or calendar. This provides a secure and private working environment. The conference and calendar names in workspaces never appear in the Directory and can therefore be duplicates. There will be no confusion if three teachers want to call a conference "grade 3" because these conferences aren't in the Directory and won't cause confusion. There are two ways for users to create unpublished conferences. First, you can disable the "Publish Directory names" privilege, while enabling the "Create conferences" and "Create calendars" privileges. No conference or calendar that user creates will appear in the Directory. Alternatively, users can with the "Publish Directory names" privilege enabled can still create unpublished conferences by selecting "Do not publish in Directory" on the conference permissions form. Here are some examples of unpublished conferences at work: Example 1 A group of employees have been assigned to work together on a company project. One of them creates workspace and add the others to the workgroup, so they can share resources, questions, progress reports, and completed work amongst themselves without interference from other members of the company. Example 2 A high school art teacher creates shared workspace for her class, putting in notes about different painting techniques, art periods throughout history, and so on. Students in the class, each given an assignment on the life and works of a particular artist, post their work in the workspace for each other to look at and study from for the final exam. The teacher has three different classes, so she creates a workspace for each one. She names them all "Miss Morelli's Art Class" without worrying about duplicate names, as none of them will be in the Directory. The only difference between them in the beginning is the members of the workgroup. Making conferences unlisted If you choose to add a conference to the Directory, remember that, just because the conference is listed in the Directory, not all users can see it or address mail to it. A user can only see a conference if he is made a member, or a link to the conference is placed on his Model Desktop or in a public area (within another conference he has access to). Directory filtering is also used to determine what a user or group of users sees in the Directory. Still, you may have conferences you do not want listed in the FirstClass Directory, even if the creator has set it otherwise. You can make the conference unlisted by doing the following from the administrator's Desktop: 1       Double-click the conference in the administrator's Directory. 2       Select "Unlisted". Unlisted conferences can be seen by you and your subadministrators in the administrator's Directory and can be seen by those users with the "View unlisted" privilege. Top Renaming conferences Changing the name of the original icon for a conference deletes the old name from the Directory, and adds the new name. Changing the name of an alias doesn't affect the original or its Directory entry. However, messages addressed to the conference must be addressed to the original conference name, not the alias.         Note If a renamed original conference is being replicated over a gateway, remote administrators must also change the name of their copy of the conference. Top Using mail rules to administer conferences You and users who are conference controllers (those with the "Edit permissions" permission), can create mail rules for conferences. Mail rules are described in Client Help. Consider the use of mail rules in the following scenarios: •       automatically archive conference contents •       if a message is sent to a conference and is flagged as unapproved (awaiting approval), automatically reply to the sender letting them know the status of the message, and reasons for which the message may have been flagged for approval (invalid attachment type, message/attachment above acceptable size limit, etc.) •       automatically redirect all incoming mail to a specific conference or Mailbox with a particular subject or spam level to another container. Top Creating conferences on other volumes When you create a conference, you can store it on a volume other than the master volume. The volume must have a status of full use. Usually, conferences take up very little space, because the items they contain are actually stored in the Mailboxes of the users who created the items. However, if an item is received from another server through a gateway or from the Internet, it is stored on the conference's volume. Therefore, replicated conferences might use up a significant amount of disk space and you might want to put them on a volume other than the master volume. For example, if you have a gateway to an Internet news server, you would probably put all newsgroups on a separate volume. Conferences you create in the General Conferences folder are automatically stored on the master volume. To create a conference on another volume: 1       Double-click MultiVol Conferences on the administrator's Desktop. 2       Open the volume on which you want to create the conference. 3       Choose File > New > New Conference. A new conference is created in MultiVol Conferences. The underline indicates that this conference is unprotected. To protect this conference, use Choose File > Properties (Windows) or Get Info (Mac) and select Protected. 4       optional Change the conference name and icon before protecting the conference. 5       Make a link to the new conference and move this link to the desired location. 6       optional Grant memberships and permissions to the appropriate users, if this is a private conference. Top