Setting up public chat rooms About public chat rooms Setting up public chat rooms About public chat rooms A public chat room is an online conversation among users who are currently connected to a FirstClass server with access to a particular chat room. Once the a public chat room is created, it works just like a private instant messaging session. Public chat rooms are set up and maintained by the administrator or those who have the "Create chat rooms" privilege set on the group privileges or user information form. Public chat rooms usually pertain to a specific topic. You might want to add public chat rooms for several topics. To organize the chat rooms, create a "chat rooms" folder inside the General Conferences folder. To enter a public chat room, double-click the associated icon. In FirstClass, each public chat room has an icon that looks like this: A red balloon beside the public chat room icon indicates that one or more people are currently participating in the online discussion. A participant in a chat room can invite any other user to join the session, the same way as in a private instant messaging session. The invited party does not need to have access to the conference where the public chat room is located to accept an invitation, but this person does need the "Join public chat" privilege. People with moderator permission or higher can save conversation transcripts just as they can be saved for private instant messaging sessions. In the case of public chats, transcripts are saved in the transcript pane. Top Setting up public chat rooms 1       Open the conference, folder, or workspace in which you want to create the chat room.                 Note         Public chat rooms can only be located in a conference, folder, or workspace. You can't put a link to a public chat room on a Model Desktop or an individual user's Desktop. 2       Choose New > New Chat Room. 3       Choose File > Properties (Windows) or Get Info (Mac) with the new public chat room selected. 4       Fill in the Info form. Top