Faculty/Staff Computing HelpDesk Firstclass Troubleshooting

The Ultimate HelpDesk Firstclass Troubleshooting Documentation

Conference Issues

Conference Requests

To request that a conference be created, please open the Conference Requests conference in FirstClass, and read the message called How to Request a Conference.

Special note for faculty preparing conferences for academic classes:

Two weeks prior to the beginning of each semester, the aliases for courses from the previous semester are removed from the the Courses conference. Only current courses appear here, but the original course conference is still on the server, and faculty--or others--who have an alias for it on their FirstClass desktop can still access the conference. The controller can still "subscribe"--or unsubscribe--others to it. Old courses are thus archived, available for future re-use. Remember that even in archived conferences, messages will only last for the duration of the expiry period.

Permissions and Access

Permissions determine who has access to a conference, and what they are allowed to do within that conference.

You only need to list individuals and groups to the extent that specific access is required. Since permissions are hierarchical, the order in which names are listed is important. All Users Disallowed has to be the last entry or else anyone whose name is below that will not be able to access the conference.

Permissions do not cascade downward. You must explicitly set them for your main conference and each sub conference you control.

Subscribers: After a Conference is set up, the controller can put a conference on another person's desktop. This can be done by putting the names of all the people in the subscribers list in the permissions. In Version 9.002, controllers will find the List of Subscribers in a different window from the rest of the permissions. The subscribers can be accessed via a button in the permissions list or by right-clicking (CONTROL-click on Mac) the conference. The benefit of this is a shorter permissions window and the ability to sort the subscriber list by name.

Commonly used access levels

• Controller - the one or two people in charge of the conference. Only Controllers can change the Permissions on that conference.
• Contributor - for those you want to be able to post and read messages
• Reader - users can only read messages
• Disallowed - often applied to All Users (i.e., everybody other than those you've individually specified) to secure privacy. This must be the last item in the list, when used (see example below).

Making a list of Subscribers from a Class List

You can download names from a class list or some other list of names and import them as the list of subscribers to a conference, without having to type each name individually under List of Subscribers in Permissions. In Version 9.002, remember that the List of Subscribers is found in a separate window than within Permissions.

Paste the list of FirstClass (or reasonably similar) names into a FirstClass message, one name to a line. Arrange the Permissions window and this message window so that you can see both of them at the same time. Select all the names and drag-and-drop them into the List of Subscribers box.

Lost Messages in Conference

The messages in your conference can be temporarily filtered by one of four categories: Incoming, Outgoing, Unsent or Unread.

Check if you have any Filters on (View > Filter, see if anything on the list is checked). Revert to the default by choosing All Items.

Lost Column in Conference or Mailbox

When you accidentally lose a sorting column (for example, Name, Subject, Last Modified) in your mailbox or a conference, try the following to retrieve it:

1. Check to see if you have made the column so narrow that it is no longer visible.
2. In the window where the column is missing you can use a checklist of column headings to select the one that you want to add. To find the checklist on a Windows computer, right-click once on any of the existing column headings. On a Macintosh computer hold down the CONTROL key and click your mouse on any column heading.
3. You will see a list of column labels such as Kind, SubType, Last Modified, etc. The visible columns will have checkmarks next to them. Click any column name to add or remove the check. You can then drag the column heading to position it among the other columns.

Restoring Deleted Conferences

If a controller accidentally deletes a conference she may be able to get it back.

If she requested the conference from Conference Requests, then she can do so because those conferences live in an area of FirstClass that no one except FirstClass administrators have access to it. What she had on her desktop was an alias to the conference in that area.

However, if a controller creates a conference or sub-conference and accidentally deletes it, it's gone after 24 hours.

If a user deletes a conference on the desktop:

1. Click on the Trash Can (in older versions of FirstClass, go to View > Show Deleted Items).
2. Click on the conference and go to File > Undelete (this only works if you are the controller of a conference).
3. If it does not appear in either your Trash Can or on your desktop, then navigate to the original location of the conference (For example if the deleted conference was Community click on Wellesley Conferences on the desktop > Open forums > Community).
4. Open up other folders to check if the item has been dropped accidentally into them.
5. If the conference can still not be found refer to the First Class referral.

Note : If the conference was a public conference, they can add it to their desktop by finding it, highlighting it and then going to the Collaborate menu > Add to Desktop. If it is a private conference they can contact the controller and have their name added to the list of subscribers of that conference.

Controller Can't Edit Their Own Messages

A new feature in FirstClass 7.1 onwards is that the controller that created a conference will not be able to modify their own messages in the conference. Instead, they need to unsend and re-send the message.