Creating shared workspaces: Inviting other users

You create a shared work space by inviting other users as members to one of your private folders. This way, you may turn any private folder into a shared workspace. By inviting other users to share the folder with you grant them access rights to this folder and to all of its con­tents.

•      Choose  File    Access    Invite Member  from the top menu bar of the folder to bring up the ‘Invite Mem­ber’ form. This action may also be invoked using   Access    Invite member in the action menu of a private folder.

•      Select persons to be invited and transfer them to the ‘Selected users’ field using the  button. You have several possibilities for selection, which you may also combine:

•      Enter user names or email addresses directly.

•      Choose contacts or contact lists from your address book.

You may choose only from contacts that are associated with a user or a per­missible email address, i.e. an email address that may be used for self-regis­tration at your BSCW server. Likewise you are only offered contact lists for invitation that contain at least one such contact. When you transfer a contact list to the field ‘Selected users’, all users and permissible email addresses of the contact list are in­vited to the shared workspace. Other contacts are not taken into account.

•      Search for BSCW users and choose new members from the search result.

•      Search for BSCW groups and choose member groups as new members from the search result.

Only those member groups can be found which have been de­clared as available for in­vitation beforehand (see 4.1.3.2 Member groups). The member groups be­come new mem­bers of the workspace as a whole.

Member groups may contain a community as member or even may allow public access, the latter being indicated by a ‘Guest User’ in the member group name. Inviting such member groups opens your workspace for the members of the com­munity or even the general public.

•      Choose from contact lists shown at the end of the drop-down list.

These contact lists come from your address book. If you select such a contact list, all user contacts and contacts with a permissible email address are listed for you to choose from. If you are sure that you want to invite the whole contact list, choose it as a whole from your address book (see above).

You may also remove entries from the ‘Selected users’ field using the  button.

If you would like to see who is already member of the workspace at this point,

•      select the option ‘Choose from workspace members’. Using this option, you can also invite existing members of the workspace in an additional role.

•      Enter a personal invitation message into the ‘Invitation text’ field. This personal mes­sage will be added to the automated invitation message that is sent to all persons who are not yet registered users of your BSCW server.

Tick the respective check box above the invitation text if you want to have an in­vi­ta­tion message also sent to the registered users whom you invite.

•      Specify the role which the new members are going to play in the workspace in ‘Invite new members as’. The role determines what actions the new members may perform within the workspace. The default role for new members is ‘Member’ (see 4.2.1 Members’ page for a description of standard roles). If you want to invite mem­bers in dif­ferent roles, you have to repeat the invite action.

•      Specify in what ‘Invitation language’ the automated part of an invitation message should be sent to users not yet registered.

•      Click [OK] to grant workspace access to the new members and to send off the invita­tion messages.

If you have selected or entered email addresses that BSCW has not yet associated with regis­tered users, BSCW will automatically send an email message to these addresses. This mes­sage, sent on behalf of you, is an invitation to register as a user of your BSCW server. The message will be sent in the language that you have selected, and your personal invitation that you have entered under ‘Invitation text’ will be appended to the standard text.

In your home folder you may create shared workspaces in one go: instead of first creating a private folder and then inviting other users as members, you

•      select  File    New    Workspace  from the top menu. In the ‘Members’ section, the action form lets you specify the members of the new workspace. In the ‘General’ section you may also choose to have a contact list and a group calendar created along with the new workspace.

As the creator of the workspace, you automatically become the ‘Manager’ of the workspace, a role that includes more access rights than the simple ‘Member’ (see 4.2.1 The BSCW role concept for a description of standard roles).