Information Systems Department College of Computing Sciences New Jersey Institute of Technology CIS677-102/4: Information Systems Principles, Spring 2005 Professor Bieber
A Public Research University

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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

Follow these steps if you do not have a WebBoard account from a previous course.

1. Go to http://webboard.njit.edu.
2. Select "Need" under the Account heading for "CIS 677-102" (for Spring 2005, which is the first set of classes at the top of the page). 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. 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 "CIS 677-102". (If you are in a public lab and 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.

Accessing WebBoard Next Time

Next time you can follow the same process. Or you can go directly to our WebBoard using the "WebBoard Info" quick link from any course page or with the URL:
http://webboard.njit.edu:8080/~S2005CIS677-102/

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 (which is a really handy feature).

• 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. 

More on WebBoard Comments

• Confirmation: 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.)
• Editing & Deleting: You can edit your own messages, and also delete them once they've been posted.
• Attachments: Create a message as usual. Be sure to click on the "Attach File" check box. After submitting, WebBoard will then ask you to proofread your comment and suggest any spelling corrections as usual. Only then will it ask you to select your file for attachment. Note: Please be absolutely sure not to attach anything with a virus...
• Clarity: Always enter a TOPIC line when creating new messages! 

Seeing the New Comments

Once you read all the comments in a conference, you should tell WebBoard that you have read them. Then next time you log in to WebBoard, you can just see the comments that have been entered since then.

To do this, click on the "Marked Read" option. This will list all the conferences and the number of "new" comments in them. Click on the conference you finished reading the messages in. The list will redisplay showing zero messages unread for that conference.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Be very careful not to click on "mark ALL conferences read" at the top of the screen by accident!

On the left-hand panel, click on "new" at the top to see only the messages that you have not yet marked read.

Note that you can only mark an entire conference as read, not individual messages. 

Get WebBoard Comments by Email/Emailing Messages from and to WebBoard

You will find it useful to have the comments in the "Administration" conference and "Questions and Answers" conference emailed to your regular email account. Also do this for your team's private conference.

Certain conferences are set up to optionally email you each message posted to it. 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.)

Chat & Page

WebBoard does have a chat feature. You can also page people currently using the system. Choose the appropriate buttons at the top of the window.

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.