Participating

Discussions

Discussions on ECS behave very much like a mailing list – one can send email to community’s email address, and the message will be distributed to all community members, while ECS will record the message in the community archive. One also has the option to create and send a message through ECS web site.

To see current discussions in a community, click on discussions content selector in the upper right region of the page. (If discussions link is not visible, it means that a community does not have discussions enabled). The page that appears lists current discussion topics ordered by time of the latest contribution, with most recently active topic on top. Each topic shows how many contributions there are and lists the names of all contributors. Click on the topic title to see the discussion content.

Each discussion topic starts with a single message followed by a number of replies.

To contribute to a discussion, click on reply below the message you wish to reply to. To start a new topic, click on start discussion link above the topic list.

To contribute to a discussion via email, respond to the notification email you have received. Please note that your reply will be distributed to all community members.

To start a new discussion via email, send an email message to community_name@ecs.edgeof.net. Community email address is listed on the community info page (or settings page if you are a community leader).

Announcements

An announcement is a message to all community members, without expectation of reply. Members cannot reply to an announcement, neither through the web site nor via email. Latest announcement also appears on top of the community page, or below the community welcome message if one is defined.

To see the archive of all previous announcements, click on announcements link in the content selector in the upper right region of the page. Announcements are listed in chronological order, most recent one first.

To contribute an announcement, click on add announcement on top of the announcement list. To contribute an announcement via email, send a message to announce.community_name@ecs.edgeof.net.

Community email address is listed on the community info page (or settings page if you are a community leader).

Library

The library contains publications, documents, and links of interest to community members. The library also provides access to discussion and announcement attachments through Attachments folder.

The library organizes all contributions into folders, similar to how folders are created on a computer hard drive.

To view documents in the library, click on library in the content selector in the upper right area of the page, and then click on the titles of available folders to see the documents and links they contain.

To create a new folder, click on add folder link, provide the folder title and a description. The title will appear in a list of folders, while the description will be visible above the list of files once a user is looking at the folder. The description will also appear as a tool-tip bubble when a user hovers over the folder name in a list of folders.

To edit a folder, click on the folder name, and then choose edit link below the folder title.

To delete a folder, click on the folder name and then choose delete link below the folder title. Deleting a folder deletes all files that the folder contains; if any of the files was copied to other folder or folders, its copies will not be deleted.

Built-in Folders

ECS library contains three special folders, separated from other folders in a section built-in folders:

  • Appearance and its sub-folder Images are only visible to community leaders, and contain files related to community appearance.

  • Inbox (or Attachments) is where all discussion and announcement attachments are stored. While it is possible to create sub-folders and new documents and links within Inbox, this is not a recommended practice, as this folder might be removed from future versions.

Links

One can add links to resources of interest in the library. Members visiting the library can click on the link to be taken to the web resource. Links are nothing more than usual web hyperlinks, just like one would add to own browser favorites section.

To visit a resource the link points to, click on the link title to view its details, and then on the hyperlink in the Link field to take you to the linked resource.

To add a link, browse to the appropriate folder and click add link. You can either include or omit the leading protocol designator (http:// or https://) – if you omit it, ECS will automatically add it when displaying the link. Add a description and a human-friendly title to make the link more useful to other members.

To edit a link, click on the link title in the library and then choose edit link below the description.

To forward a link to someone via email (regardless whether the recipient is an ECS user or not), click on forward, enter recipient’s email address, and click send button.

Documents

Document library allows one to store documents and publications and organize them into folders. In addition to the file itself, one can define additional informative properties (meta-data) of uploaded documents.

Click on a document name to see document details and access the version list. To download a document, click on the download link on the document details page.

To upload a new document, click on add file on the green bar above the folder title. Files can only be added within folders, thus

Title is a user-friendly descriptive title of the file. The title can be as long as needed.

Author is a publication author or authors, if the uploaded file is a publication.

Source describes a publication source.

Date published is the date the publication is originally published. The document property page will also show a separate creation date label once the document is uploaded.

Description lets one enter the document abstract or a description of the uploaded document. This description is indexed by ECS, and a well-written description will help users locate the document better.

Language is the language the document is written in.

Tags are descriptive labels one can use to better describe a document. Enter as many words as you want, separated by a comma.

One can post a document to additional communities at initial upload, or can copy the document once it is uploaded.

Every document has a universal short link that one can use to share the link to the document or to a document property page. To share the link to the current document property page, click on +share link in the lower right corner of the page and either copy a link Short URL or click on email to open a new email message with document’s short link. If a short link ends in /view (for example http://ecs.edgeof.net/?4chazvgq/view) the link will open a document property page. Short link without /view (for example: http://ecs.edgeof.net/?4chazvgq) will link directly to the file and will start the download immediately.

Document Versioning

If a document has more than one version, you can see all previous versions by clicking on view history link after the Version field.

To create a new document version, click on the check out link, download the document if you need to make changes, or just confirm you want to continue with the check out.

Once you are ready to upload the next version of the document, click on check in and upload the file with the new version. Document’s version will increase and the new version will become active – anyone who clicks on the download link on the document’s property page, or in an email notification will receive the latest version of the document. Even users who received the email notification for any of the previous versions will get the latest version when they click on the link in the original email message.

Previous version will be visible and downloadable from view history page.

To make the previous version active, so that any click on a download link downloads it, go to the document history and click on Make This the Current Version button.

While document is checked out, no other user will be able to upload another version of the document until the user who checked the document out uploads it, or cancels the check out. A community leader can also cancel the check out by clicking on cancel checkout button.

With ECS document versioning it is not possible to compare changes to document content between revisions – the mechanism simply stores each file in the library and uses the latest stored file as a source for all downloads.

Moving and Copying Documents

One can move or copy a document to other folders or communities. Copies of a document are live: when the original changes, all copies change as well.

To copy a document, click on a document title to open document’s property page and then choose copy to communities from the left bar. Select to which communities to copy the document and choose whether to notify members of those communities that a new document has been added. You will only see a list of communities you are a leader of. If you are not a leader of any community, you will not be able to copy a document and copy to communities will not appear on the left bar.

To move a document, click on a document title to open document’s property page and then choose move from the left bar. A list of folders within the library will appear for you to select. Select the folder you want to move the document to, and click on Move button. No notification gets sent to users when you move a document within community library.

To move a document to another community, copy the document and then delete the original.

Deleting any copy of a copied document will not delete other copies.

Commenting on a Document

Users can comment on documents in the library. Comments will start a new discussion thread in discussions section, with the subject Comments on file ‘document title’.

To comment on a document, open the document property page and click on comment to enter the comment.