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Interaction Center FAQ

Version 0.3 2/1/97

In the CoIL Interaction Center FAQ below you'll find answers to your questions. If you can't find the answer to your question ask it in an email.

In the Tutorial you'll find the page by page description of the Interaction Center with an explanation of your options.

In the HTML Helper you'll find the basics of HTML, which you can use as a cheat sheet, when writing responses in HTML.

Questions:

1. General information on the use of the center
  1. How do I access the center?
  2. Where can I find help using the site?
  3. How do I quit/leave the center?

2. Navigating around the site
  1. What is in the Interaction Center?
  2. What are my navigational options?
  3. What are the buttons for in the toolbar?
  4. What are the set of text links below the toolbar for?
  5. What can I do at the home page?

3. Managing the conversation: conferences, items, responses
  1. What are the items and responses?
  2. What can I do at a conference's home page?
  3. How do I respond to a message?
  4. How do I start a new discussion?
  5. What's the difference between "literal, wordwrapping and HTML" responses?
  6. How can I include URLs in my responses?
  7. Can I create links to other conferences items, responses in my response?
  8. Can I edit my items, responses?
  9. Can I check who has seen an item, response?

4. Personal information
  1. Where can I change my settings, including my password, name, email address...?
  2. How do I change my password?
  3. When and how can I change my personal profile?
  4. Why do I have to enter my name on my personal profile page?
  5. Why should I put my email address on my personal profile page?
  6. Can I put my picture to my personal profile page?
  7. Can I customize anything else?

1. General information on the use of the center

  1. Q: How do I access the center?

     A: The center's entrypoint is at http://www.co-i-l.com/sweb/start.cgi
    Bookmark this URL because any other bookmark won't work since each time you logon, the system creates a different URL/address. If you bookmark any other page, next time you logon you might get a "timeout" message.

  2. Q: Where can I find help using the site?

     A: In the Demonstration conference you'll find examples and explanations of the usage of the system.
    A: In this user guide, and in the tutorial document.

  3. Q: How do I quit/leave the center?

     A: Click on the "Quit" button located at the top right of each page. If you are using Caucus at a public station, please QUIT from your Web browser when you are finished. Otherwise the web browser may "remember" your user id and password.

TO THE QUESTIONS

2. Navigating around the site

  1. Q: What is in the Interaction Center?

     A: The Interaction Center is made up of the home page, conferences with items and responses, personal pages and help files.

  2. Q: What are my navigational options?

     A: There is a set of buttons on the top of each page in a horizontal toolbar. You can click onto those which are not "grayed". (On most pages there is an identical toolbar at the bottom of the pages, for your convenience, so you don't have to scroll to the top of the page to access these buttons.)
    A: There is a set of text links on the top of each page, below the graphical toolbar. This shows where you are in within the structure of the center. You can click any of these links to get to a higher level.
    A: There are links and buttons in the main body of the pages. More on them below.

  3. Q: What are the buttons for in the toolbar?

     A: The Items button takes you to the default item list of the conference you are in.
    A: By clicking the Search button you can search the conference you are in for a word or string of words. You can search one conference at a time, the one you are in.
    A: The People button takes you to a page where you can search for members of the interaction center by their name and list members of the conference you are in.
    A: By entering a number after the Go to Item button then clicking the button you can go directly to an item in the conference you are in.
    A: With the Quit button you can leave the center. A few words on the importance of quitting the system.

  4. Q: What is the set of text links for below the toolbar?

     A: The links below the toolbar, separated from each other with "=>", represent the hierarchical levels of the center. The further right the link is the deeper, lower it is in the system.
    A: By clicking on any of the links you can go directly to that level/page.

  5. Q: What can I do at the Interaction Center's home page?

     A: Besides using the buttons in the toolbar you can list all conferences available to you, read all new discussion, create/change your personal conference list, go directly to a conference or the new material in it, join a conference by its name.
    A: By clicking list all conferences you'll see the list of conferences on the host. You can join those which are underlined, by clicking on the name of the conference.
    A: By clicking Read all new discussion you can read all the messages and responses, in the conferences of your personal conference list, which were written since you last logged on to the center. You can read the new messages one by one, and go to the next one by simply clicking the Pass button. However you have to have a personal conference list for this feature to be available.
    A: You can create your personal conference list, by clicking the link with these words. For convenient access and automatic reporting put the conferences on your personal conference list which you plan to visit/read regularly.
    A: By clicking on a conference name you'll get to the conference home page. By clicking the number after it you can read the new item(s) and response(s).
    A: By typing a conference name in the text box after the Join button and clicking it you can go directly to a conference. You have to know the name of the conference or its first letters to be able to use this feature.

TO THE QUESTIONS

3. Managing the conversation: conferences, items, responses

  1. Q: What are the conferences items and responses?

     A: The Interaction Center is made up from conferences. Each conference is about one unique topic, area of interest. A conference consists of many separate discussions, called items. Each item has two parts: the item text, and the responses to it. You can find more on them in the tutorial.

  2. Q: What can I do at a conference's home page?

     A: Besides using the buttons in the toolbar and following the text links below it, you can read the new materials, mark the items as seen or new, create/change default list of items, create a new item, select a set of items to display, or manage your items. (Conference organizers can also customize the conference from here.)
    A: You can read all new materials by clicking the read new materials link, or you can read them item by item, by clicking on the number of the items.
    A: You can mark items in the conference as having been "seen" by you (even if you have NOT seen them) -- or "new" for you (even if you HAVE seen them.) When you mark an item as "new" next time you logon it will show up as a new, unread item. It is useful to set an item or response to "new", by clicking on the word "seen", which will toggle the word to "new", when you want to come back, respond later to that item, response. You can mark all items as "seen" or "new" by clicking the corresponding word or you can mark them individually by clicking the word "individually". You can also change from "new" to "seen" and back any item or response when you are reading them.
    A: You can create your default item list for any conference by clicking these words. On the "default list item" page you can set which set of items should be on the default list, and how it should behave. The items on your default item list will either show up every time you go to the conference home page, or only when first starting each session.
    A: You can start a new discussion by creating a new item, by clicking on the create new item link.
    A: You can display different sets of items from the conference home page: all items (by clicking the All button), those items which have new responses (by clicking the New button), a range of items, (by entering two numbers, with a hyphen in between, into the box after the Range button, then clicking the button), items created by you (by clicking the Mine button), items created from a certain date (by entering the date , with slashes between month/day/year, into the box after the Since button, then clicking the button), no items (by clicking the None button).
    A: You can manage the items you created by editing (change the text), freezing (no one can add a new response to it), deleting or forgetting them.

  3. Q: How do I respond to a message?

     A: Scroll down to the bottom of the page where you see the message you'd like to respond to. If there is a box there type your answer in, and push the Post+View or Post+Go button. (If you want to start your response over, you can clear the box any time by clicking the Clear Box button.) If there is no box to type your message in, either the item is frozen and you cannot add to it, or you are not at the last message in the item, in which case you can click on the Last Page link.
    A: You can also upload any file from your computer by clicking the Upload button. You arrive at a page where you can upload the file with three steps:
    1. Browse your computer for the file you want to upload, by clicking the Browse button
    2. Select the way it should be represented. The file can be plain text or html file, in this case you can edit it even after uploading; it can be a URL or a link, in this case you can enter the text which will serve as the text of the link, or it can be an image, in this case make sure it is a gif or jpg file.
    3. Click the Upload! button.

  4. Q: How do I start a new discussion?

     A: From the conference home page, by clicking onto the "create new item" link.

  5. Q: What's the difference between "literal, wordwrapping and HTML" responses?
    A: When other people view your response, it will normally appear word-wrapped. Use blank lines to separate paragraphs. You may also indent lines to keep them from being wrapped; they will appear in a fixed-pitch font like this.
    A: HTML means your response will be interpreted as hyper-text mark up language -- which means you can do special formatting, or even include images. An HTML Helper is available by following the HTML Helper link above the text box. It will appear in another window so you can view it while entering your response in the original window.
    A: The "literal" choice tells Caucus to try and keep your line breaks (where you pressed return) as much as possible.

  6. Q: How can I include URLs in my responses?

     A: If you post your message as word-wrapped or literal and you type in your URL starting with http://... and leave at least one space before and after the URL, Caucus will recognize it and will turn it into a clickable hyperlink.
    A: If you post your message as HTML, you'll have to use the proper link tags (<A HREF="http://...">text of link</A>) so the link will be recognized as such.

  7. Q: Can I create links to other conferences, items, responses in my response?

     A: Yes, if you post your message as word-wrapped. (It doesn't work if you post your message as HTML or literal format. ) You can link to another conference's home page (http:/caucus/conference_name/) , or any item (http:/caucus/conference_name/item_number) or any response (http:/caucus/conference_name/item_number/response_number) by typing a link with the syntax in the parenthesis. E.g. http:/caucus/demonstartion/7/3 link would take you to the third response of the seventh item of the demonstration conference. Notice that there is only one backslash after the colon. It wouldn't work with the regular two. It is case sensitive, everything should be in lowercase even if you see the conference name starting with a capital.

  8. Q: Can I edit my items, responses?

     A: If you see the edit button on the right side of the item or response you want to edit you can do it any time, by clicking on it. Please make sure that you don't edit out important content which would place the followup responses out of context.

  9. Q: Can I check who has seen an item, response?

     A: Yes, by clicking the who has seen this item link at the bottom of the page where the last response of an item is. From the page which comes up you can get a report on everyone or, by typing a name, individually who has seen this item. If you click on the names on the report you arrive at the person's profile, and at the bottom of this page you can even check to see the last item the person viewed.

TO THE QUESTIONS

4. Personal information

  1. Q: Where can I change my settings, including my password, name, email address...?

     A: By clicking on your name anywhere you see it. It will take you to your personal information page where you can change your personal information, password and other settings.

  2. Q: How do I change my password?

     A: Fill in the three fields in the second section of the personal information page then click the Change My Password button. Please make sure you remember your password, because the webmaster doesn't have access to the passwords and cannot tell you if you forget it.

  3. Q: How can I change my personal profile?

     A: You can change it any time and as often as you wish.
    A: Click the "Change personal info" button, then the change personal info link. You arrive at the page where you can change your personal profile.

  4. Q: Why do I have to enter my name on my personal profile page?

     A: Your name will automatically be shown next to your comments in the conference.

  5. Q: Why should I put my email address on my personal profile page?

     A: It will make it easier for people in the conference to contact you, if they have something more private or individual to say to you.

  6. Q: Can I add my picture to my personal profile page?

     A: Yes, if your picture is already on the web. You can place it on your personal profile page by typing or pasting its URL into the box after the "URL of my picture" on the personal information page then clicking the change my personal information button below it.

  7. Q: Can I customize anything else?

     A: Yes, you can change the width and height of the text box where you enter your responses. E.g. if you work regularly on small screen computer you might want to make it smaller, or if you regularly enter longer responses you might want to make it higher so you could view it more comfortably. You can change these settings in the third section of the personal information page.
    A: You can also set the maximum number of responses showing up per page, and the number of responses showing up before a desired response, in the third section of the personal information page.
    A: You can also set the spaces to the left and right of the response text in the third section of the personal information page.

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Last updated on 02/24/00
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