New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT)
Computer and Information Science Department (CIS)
CIS677: Information System Principles, Spring 2000
Professors: Michael Bieber and Catherine Campbell

Getting Started with WebBoard

Note: WebBoard comes with extensive on-line help, so take advantage of it if you are curious, stuck, or looking for a particular feature!

Get a WebBoard Account

1. Go to http://webboard.njit.edu.
2. Select "Need" under the Account heading for CIS677, and fill in the information. Note that a temporary password will be emailed to the email account you specify.
3. Go to your email account and wait for mail from the WebBoard Webmaster (currently "al@njit.edu"). Hopefully this will arrive within seconds, but it may take much longer.
4. Copy this password from the EDIT menu.
5. Return to http://webboard.njit.edu and click on CIS677. (If you then see the "Welcome" screen, then someone else was on this browser previously and did not log out. Select "Login Again" from the "More..." menu.) Enter your name and paste in the password.
6. Select "Edit your Profile" from the "More..." menu.
7. Change your password to something you'll remember. Do this a second time right below the first.
8. Fill in any other information you would like.

Reading the Class Conferences

The class conferences are listed in the left-hand frame. You can choose to see all messages in the system, or just the "new" messages since you last logged off.

• You can play around in the "Testing" conference.
• After each conference name is a parentheses indicating (# of messages in the conference, # of new messages).
• A (+) means that this is the head message in a hierarchy of messages. Click on the plus sign to expand it. A (-) sign means that the hierarchy is shown already through indenting. Click on the (-) sign to hide the hierarchy. (If this doesn't work then you're in a mode that shows one hierarchy at a time. Clicking on another category will hide this message hierarchy and expand the other.)
• A paper clip means that the message contains an attachment.
• When you are creating a new message, you'll have the option to look it over, and even spell-check it, before it is posted. Check the appropriate check box once you've started a message. If you choose this option, then remember to click on the round "POST" button to post the message after checking it! (If you want to make changes before posting, use your browser's "back" button.)
• You can edit your own messages, and also delete them once they've been posted.
• Always use a SUBJECT line when creating new messages!

Emailing Messages from and to WebBoard

Certain conferences will email you all the messages posted in them. Choosing "Mailing Lists" from the "More..." conference will show you these. WebBoard uses the email address in your user profile. You can reply to these messages directly from your email account *if* that account is the one specified in your user profile. (If the mail was forwarded to a different account than that specified, you won't be able to reply by email, only within the WebBoard system.)

Viewing WebBoard Messages Through a NewsReader

You can also view messages from the conferences through a newsgroups newsreader. See the HELP menu for details.

Chat

We've enabled Chat within the CIS677 conferences. The chat room is called "CIS677" - see the HELP menu for more details.

User Profile Options/More... Options

Take a look at the options under your user profile and under the "More..." menu. Some of these might be useful. See the HELP menu for more details.

What's not quite working...

So far, a few things aren't quite working. Hopefully they'll be fixed soon.

• We can't get Chat to work.
• "Mark All Read" under the More..." menu doesn't seem to work It only works if set in your User Profile to operate automatically.

last updated: 1/18/2000

This page: http://www.cis.njit.edu/~bieber/CIS677S00/webboard.html