WebBoard 4 FAQ's (Instructors/TA's)

I want to use WebBoard for my class. What do I do?

1) Fill in our online request form, providing the following information:

• Confirmation that this course is part of the UofI Online initiative. WebBoard is available only to UofI Online courses.
• Course rubric/name, course title, and call number, e.g. Math180, Calculus I, #12345.
• Name and NetID of the primary course instructor
• Names and NetIDs of any other faculty or developers that you wish to grant board manager's access
• The type of live chat you prefer: JavaScript chat (default) or ConferenceRoom Java chat.
• The URL of your class homepage, or any other page you want users to go to when they hit the LOGOFF button in WebBoard.

2) Request an introduction to WebBoard in the ITL. If you did not do that when requesting your board, go to our webpage at http://www.accc.uic.edu/itl/ and click on Making Reservations. Please give us both a preferred and an alternate time. The session should last about 90 minutes.

3) Study our online user's guide and board manager's guide, as well as the FAQs.

How do I give my TA or colleague manager's rights for my board?

The primary course instructor should send an email to webboard@uic.edu requesting manager's permission for someone else. WebBoard does not allow you to grant these yourself.

How are users added? Are there specific rules to follow?

You must use the user's UIC NetID as his login name. As initial password, you should follow our standard policy of using the last 8 digits of the SSN. You can find that on your class roster, e.g. via rosters online from the UIC homepage, under Faculty > Services > Class Rosters. Please encourage your users to change their passwords right away, under MORE...->Edit Your Profile .

Please avoid public accounts with login names such as "guest" - except perhaps one for demonstration purposes (but see next sentences). If you ever need to give a non-UIC user access, make their login name with a suffix of "-wb", so they are distinguishable from real NetIDs and do not cause conflicts. This also applies to any demo accounts.

I want to add a user, but WebBoard won't let me. What's wrong?

If WebBoard refuses to add a user, stating that this user already exists, then this user already has access to some other board on our system. Simply send a message to webboard@uic.edu asking to give this user access to your board. Make sure to specify the user's NetID and the board-ID (the last part of its URL).

My students are having problems. Can you help?

Please get all relevant information from the student before contacting the UIC WebBoard administrators for help. That includes all of the following:

• Any error messages they got. Literally!
• What browser they were using, and what version. What ISP?
• What exactly they were trying to do
• Boardname and conference
• When exactly this occurred
• Whether they had JavaScript & cookies enabled
• In case they were posting, whether they used spell-checking
• Any other clues related to their problem

Most frequent cause for problems is the use of old browsers, such as the AOL internal browser. Students should use a modern browser (not only with AOL!). Another problem cause seems to be the internal spell-checker. We don't recommend using it, but have left it enabled, as many students need spell-checking features. However, if they experience problems when posting, they should not use spell-checking.

I am having trouble sending email from WebBoard.

For the instructor/TA, WebBoard 4 includes an interface for sending mail to your board's users without using an external mail program. Click on More...->Manager->Send Email and choose your intended addressees, then type your message into the form. When you are done typing the message, click on Preview . On the resulting page, you can still make changes, e.g. to the list of addressees. Then click Send to deliver the message. Do include a copy to yourself to be sure the message is properly delivered, and contact the WebBoard administrators if you don't receive it by the next day.

Sending regular email from within WebBoard—for example by clicking on the "Email Reply" links at the top of a message—is done by your browser's mail client. WebBoard itself has nothing to do with it. Thus you need to have your browser properly configured to send mail. Basically, the mail client needs to know who you are, what your email-address is, and what SMTP-server to contact for sending out your mail.
In Netscape 4, go to Edit->Preferences->Mail&Groups->Identity and fill in your name and email-address (preferably of the form NetID@uic.edu ). You can also choose a signature file here. Then, click on Mail Server on the left and enter your NetID as username, and smtpserv1.cc.uic.edu as outgoing mail server. Finally, click on Messages on the left, and make sure that By default, send HTML messages is NOT checked. Set the automatic line-wrap to 62 characters.

In Internet Explorer 4, choose View->Internet Options->Programs and select the program you want to use for email from the drop-down menu. You will have to configure that program outside of Internet Explorer, e.g. for Eudora, this is done in Eudora's Tools->Options menu. Full instructions are available as part of the documentation for UIC's Network Services Kit (NSKit).

Can I customize/automatize WebBoard?

Not too much. It is possible to change text and layout of some pages, but we cannot add functionality to the system, such as new sorting methods or display mechanisms. However, you can now choose among various color/icon themes to customize the look and feel of your site.

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