4.2 Workspace and folder members

4.2.1 Members - definition

4.2.2 Adding members

4.2.3 Choosing where to add members

4.2.4 Membership page

4.2.5 Membership groups

4.2.6 Removing members

4.2.1 Members - definition

Members of the workspace are those who have been invited to share the information in the workspace. Workspace members can navigate through the workspace contents and can perform actions, such as adding or replacing documents, depending on their access rights.

Members can be added at any level in the hierarchy to folders as well as workspaces. There is no limit to the number of people with whom the workspace or folder is shared. However, if adding members to a folder, the folder must be a shared folder, i.e. a folder within a workspace. It is not possible to add members to a personal folder ( section 9.2.1).

Who is permitted to invite other people to join the workspace is controlled by access rights - see section 4.6. In a workspace or folder with default access rights, all members are allowed to invite or remove other people as members.

Inviting or excluding members in a workspace or folder from the may be controlled in a range of ways, depending on the access rights specified, e.g.:

• complete decentralisation where every member is allowed to add or remove members
• membership administration rights are given to specific, nominated individuals
• strict centralisation where only the owner of the workspace is allowed to add or remove members

4.2.2 Adding members

Inviting a user to the workspace or shared folder will do one of two things:

• if the user is already a registered user of the Business Collaborator server, they will see the workspace or folder the next time they return to their home page (e.g. when they next log in), OR

• if the user is not already a registered user of the Business Collaborator server, inviting them to your workspace or folder will trigger an invitation to register with the Business Collaborator server and to become a member of your workspace once they have registered

Note

On the Business Collaborator server you use, there may be restrictions on who is permitted to invite new users.

To add one or more members, click  Add  |   Member  when inside the workspace or folder to which you wish to invite them. This will bring up a form as illustrated in Figure 4.2-1. You may invite a member to your workspace or folder in one of the following ways:

• if the user you wish to invite appears in your address book (see section 4.4), you may select their name from the list which appears on the "Add members" page
• you may type the person’s user name into the text box which is presented to you
• you may type the person’s email address into the text box

To add several members to the workspace or folder at the one time, select several users from the list displayed or type in several user names or email addresses into the text box (placing each new name on a new line).

An additional text box is available in which you can enter a message to be sent to new users of the system. This message will be incorporated into the automatically generated invitation email and will only be received by those who are not yet registered users of the server.

Figure 4.2-1: Adding members - to the Client Portals workspace.

Note

If a user name which you enter is not known to the server, an error message will be displayed.

If your organisation is using NTLM authentication, you may see an additional field in the "Add members" page, containing MS Exchange Distribution Lists. This will allow you to add entire groups of people to your folder or workspace easily. See your system administrator for more details.

4.2.3 Choosing where to add members

When you create a workspace, the choice of its contents and members is entirely up to you. There are a number of factors which should govern your decision about how to arrange the hierarchy. As well as determining a logical structure in which to store the information which you need to maintain, you should also consider who will need access to what information.

For instance, if you have company confidential information in your workspace, it is better to restrict the number of people who have access to this information. You could do this be inviting all project members to the top level workspace and then restricting access to folders containing sensitive information. However, this would lead to all project members being able to see the names of folders to which they had no access. It is preferable to invite a core group of users to the workspace and store sensitive information nearer the top level of the workspace where only this restricted group has access. More public information should be added in folders lower down the hierarchy, where additional members are then added. This has the additional benefit that users are not exposed to a large volume of information which is irrelevant to them.

The organisation that you might choose for a particular workspace depends on:

• the task to be fulfilled using the workspace
• the degree of responsibility assigned to each member
• the resources available for workspace moderation.

Before inviting others to a workspace, you should decide what access rights will be assigned to each workspace member.

When members have been added to a workspace or shared folder, the members icon, , will appear beside the workspace or folder's name to indicate this. A workspace to which no additional members have been invited does not display the "Members" icon. The additional members will be indicated both in the location bar and in the folder view, as shown in Figure 4.2-2:

Figure 4.2-2: Displaying where members have been added - to Client Portals and Client Folder.

4.2.4 Membership page

Click for the workspace or shared folder name to display the membership page of the object.

The membership page lists the invited members of the workspace or shared folder and includes the following information:

• people with pending membership are listed as [email address].
  A membership is pending if a person was invited but has not yet registered as a user of the Business Collaborator server. This person cannot use the workspace or shared folder at the moment.
  Persons whose membership is pending can be invited to register once again. Click  |  Re-invite  to send another invitation to the email address.
• people who are registered users of the Business Collaborator server are listed by their user name and their
• email address or
• full name and organisational affiliation, if they have completed the 'Details' form.
• Business Collaborator groups are listed as "Members of [object name]".

The membership page of a workspace or shared folder provides:

1. Access to information about members

Click a user name to display the associated 'info page' to view the information entered by this user in their 'Details' form - see section 5.6.
Click the name of a Business Collaborator group to bring up the membership page for this group - see section 4.2.

2. Membership administration

To invite members to a workspace or folder, click  Add  |   Member  in the header of the membership page or of the workspace view. (Remember that you cannot invite other individuals to share your personal folders section 9.2.1.)

Clicking  Selected | Remove  on the membership page removes the selected members from the workspace or shared folder. (Selection is done in the usual way by checking the boxes beside the members' names.)

All other workspaces, shared folders, your address book and the address books of other registered users who may include the selected user names are not affected by this action.

3. A quick way to mail all the members

Business Collaborator helps you to send an email to all, or several, members of a workspace or shared folder at once:

• On the membership page of the workspace or shared folder, select the members to receive your email.
• Click  Selected  |  Email  to bring up a form for writing and sending an email to the selected members. (This will use the email client installed on the machine on which you are working in order to send this message. If you do not have an email client on your machine, use Business Collaborator’s email tool - see Section 7 - Web-based email.)

4.2.5 Membership groups

Each workspace or shared folder has its own group of members, called "Members of [object name]". Conversely, any Business Collaborator group has a workspace or shared folder associated with it. You can become a member of a workspace or shared folder only by being invited by its owner or by another member who is entitled to invite new members.

A user of a Business Collaborator server who is invited to a workspace or shared folder on that server will learn this only from the fact that this new workspace or folder is listed in their home page. There is no additional automatic notification.

Business Collaborator groups are a useful tool for the administration of folder membership or shared mailing lists and for the management of access rights. By editing the membership of a Business Collaborator group in one place, the members of this group will automatically be change anywhere that group appears as an entity. Similarly, setting the access rights for a group requires less effort than setting different access rights for a collection of individuals.

As an example, consider the use of membership groups when setting up and administering a corporate Intranet:

• Create workspaces for small groups of people who are related by their function or the tasks they perform e.g. departments
• Add the members of each workspace as the Business Collaborator group "Members of [workspace name]" to your address book (see section 4.4) by clicking  View/Change  |   To AddrBook  on the membership page of each workspace.
• Now invite each Business Collaborator group to a workspace representing the corporate Intranet as a separate member.

Advantages of such an approach:

• Adding or removing a member from their departmental workspace automatically removes them from the corporate Intranet
• Setting access rights for each department is easy, as they need only be changed in one place
• The department has a secure departmental-only area in which to share information which is not relevant to the rest of the company

Disadvantages of such an approach:

• Any folders to which the group as a whole is added will appear within the departmental workspace for any department members
• For those outside the department, it will not be possible to see the names of individual members of other departments

Remember

If you are invited to a workspace or folder as a group, you will see the workspace or folder in your group's area. If you are invited personally, you will have objects in your personal area (your "Home page").

Note

If your organisation is using NTLM authentication, you will be able to invite the members of MS Exchange Distribution Lists to your folder or workspace easily. See your system administrator for more details.

4.2.6 Removing members

To remove a member from a workspace or folder, go to the membership page for the object (by clicking ). Select the user names on this page of the users you wish to remove and then click  Selected  |  Remove  . You will need to have sufficient permissions to remove members.

Business Collaborator does not provide a specific function to decline the invitation to a workspace or shared folder. If you do not want to be associated with a particular workspace or shared folder, you have to remove yourself from the list of members. Do this by going to the workspace or folder’s membership page and removing yourself as you would any other member.

Note 1

Deleting a workspace or shared folder to which you have been invited is equivalent to removing yourself as a member. For instance, selecting a workspace on your home page and then deleting it will usually simply remove you from the list of workspace members - you will be prompted to check that this is what you want to do. Removing members is the reverse of the process when the workspace was created and then members added - see Section 9 - Workspace auditing.

Note 2

You should take care when removing members from membership groups from your address book as this is exactly the same as removing the users from the membership group as described above - see section 4.4.3.

Note 3

To remove owners, change them back to ordinary members first - by deselecting them from the owner froup on the object's Access page (see section 4.6 and then removing them.