BSCW Tutorial

BSCW (Basic Support for Cooperative Work) enables collaboration over the Web. BSCW is a "shared workspace" system which supports document upload, event notification, group management and much more. To access a workspace you only need a standard Web browser.

Here a short How-to of BSCW is presented. If you need more information, please visit the BSCW website
If you need an exaustive tutorial, please visit official help page of BSCW.

For questions related to RE-TRUST shared workspace on BSCW, you can send a mail to Danilo Severina (severina -at- dit.unitn.it).

You can access to BSCW and manages document using a WEB browser. The browser you use must support forms and basic authentication and most browsers do that without restrinctions related to operting systems.

For access to BSCW managed by DIT at University of Trento, you can click here.

When you try to access to BSCW a pop-up window with a Security Alert is open. You must accept the certicifate: click YES.

Some browsers allow you to permanently install the certificate. If you do it, the pop-up window will not open in next accesses: the certificate is automatically accepted.

After the certificate is accepted, a new pop-up window is open to insert user's credentails. Insert your userid and password and click OK.

The credentials are sent you when you are invite for the first time in BSCW. If you use BSCW for more than one project you access to them with the same userid and password. Your credentials allow you to access to BSCW and are not correlated to a specific shared workspace.

The first page you see after the login should be as the page that is shown on the left. You have a list of workspaces that you are invited.

In the figure only RE-TRUST-021186-2 project is shown.

Click on the project name to access the RE-TRSUT workspace.

The BSCW workspace is made up as a collection of folders and files. You can browse through the tree of directory using the names of the folders as links.

The main page of the RE-TRUST workspace is as it is shown in the figure on the left.

All the folder name is selt-explicative for its contents.

To manage the shared workspace you can use:

Top menu bar: is in the top left corener of the page and it contains the menus for creating and manipulating objects within the folder. (File, Edit, View, Options, GoTo, Help)
Action shortcut: are the icons under the "Top menu bar" and they are the most frequently used action for object manipulation. The list of icons change accordingly to the profile you set: Beginner, Advanced or Expert.
Instant access bar: is a shortcut for both personal and public objects.
Navigation bar: shows the location where you are. It shows the path of the folder tree that is visited to reach the current position. The first argument is always your account name.
Context menu: is a menu that is open if you use the grey arrow on the right of object in each row. The menu shows the action you can perform on the single object (folder, file or any other object)

More information can be found here and in the correlated sub-sections.

In this small tutorial we focus only on elements that allow you to create folders and to uplaod files.

If you click on the second icon from right you can create a new folder in the location where you are. When you move above the icon a legend "Add Folder" appears.

When you click on the icon to create a new folder, a new page (as the one shown on left) appears. Two text boxes are in the page:

Name: is the name of the folder you create. Please, use self-explicative name.
Description: is an optional box. You can insert a short description of the content of the folder.

If you click on the first icon from right you can create a new file in the location where you are. When you move above the icon a legend "Add Document" appears.

When you click on the icon to upload a file, a new page (as the one shown on left) appears. The text boxes in the page are:

Local file: is the name of the file you wants to upload. You can use the browse button to search the file in your local machine.
Document name: is the name of the file that will appear in the RE-TRSUT shared workspace.
More details related to the sturcture of file name follow.
Description: is the description will appear under the name of the file in the RE-TRSUT workspace.
More details related to the sturcture of file name follow.

Document name

The document name should be the title of the file you upload.

If the file is a conference/journal/magazine paper, the document name should be the title of the paper.

If the file is a new release of a document that is "work in progress" or that is managed by more than one person, it should have the following structure

DATE_TITLE_REVISER

where

DATE: is the the date in the format YYYYMMDD: 4 digits for year, 2 for month, and 2 for day;
TITLE: is the tile of the document and it must be kept the same in all the revisions;
REVISER: is the name of the person who has modified the document.

This structure allow us to have a time-ordered list of documents.

Description

If the uploaded documetn is a paper, the strucutre of the description should be:

first line is the list of authors;
second line is the name of conference wher it is published and/or the proceeding references;
third line is the date of the publications (at least year, if it is known).