Creating objects

In the layout of the folder page, the menu entries that create objects of different types are lo­cated in the top menu bar. The action shortcuts also allow creating objects like documents, folders and discussions.

To create an object of a particular type, select the respective entry from the  File  menu or click the respective action shortcut. This will bring up a form in which to enter the information that BSCW needs to create the new object.

 File    New    Document  creates a new document in the current folder.

 File    New    Folder  creates a new folder in the current folder.

 File    New    Contact List  creates a contact list, in which members of the current workspace may collect contact information concerning relevant persons.

 File    New    URL  creates a URL object whose entry in the current folder page provides a link to a re­source that can be accessed via http://, ftp://, gopher://, etc. 4.9 URLs for objects in workspaces de­scribes the address format of BSCW objects.

 File    New    Discussion  creates a specialized folder that contains only notes, and offers you to write the first note in this discussion.

 File    New    Search Folder  creates a specialized folder that is to contain the results of a search – as a list of links to BSCW objects in case of a search in BSCW and as a list of URLs in case of a Web search. The search folder is permanent and carries a user-defined name.

 File    New    Group Calendar  creates a group calendar to be used by the members of the current fol­der, in order to coordinate their shared work.

 File    New    Community  creates a community along with its community workspace. Com­mu­ni­ties allow work­space access for large groups of users equipped with equal access rights keep­ing per­formance independent of community size; they also offer self-organized platforms for users with similar interests. Communities may be created in many different ways, the creation via the  File  menu is only possible in your home folder and address book.

 File    New    Poll  creates a poll. A poll consists of a number of questions, each allowing one or more an­swers. Polls may be directed at the members of the current workspace or at the ge­ne­ral public.

 File    New    Blog  creates a blog (Web log). Blogs consist of HTML documents as entries. Blogs are dis­played in a specific layout and differ in who may read and write the blog entries.

 File    New    Website Folder  creates a website folder. Website folders provide a convenient way to create and man­age a miniature website inside BSCW.

 File    New    DocSet  creates a document set meant for documents that are to be continually re­vised and pe­riodically published. Based on hierarchically structured templates and text vari­ables, document sets allow the automatic creation of a current set of documents by an evalua­tion process, making use of the templates and text variables. Document sets are particularly use­ful for – but not restricted to – website management.

 File    New    Project  creates a project. Projects help to define and manage the temporal con­di­tions and de­pendencies in projects organized in individual processes.

 File    New    Flow Folder  creates a flow folder along with an initial task list containing task de­scrip­tions and re­sponsible users. Upon completion of one task, a flow folder is forwarded to the next task responsible on the list.

 File    New    Task  creates a task (not to be confused with the tasks of a flow folder). Tasks have a de­scription, a set of users acting as contractors and sets of data fields serving as input and output of the task. Subtasks of a task may be linked into a complex workflow, making use of their data fields.

 File    New    Template folder  creates a specialized folder that is to contain only templates, i.e. ob­jects that are to be copied to other folders.