### First-time log-in

When you log into BSCW for the very first time, your home folder is either empty or contains the one workspace to which you were invited. In the latter case you have at least one concrete example how collaboration in BSCW looks like. But in the case of the empty home folder you might ask yourself how you should start working with BSCW.

The simplest way of starting is to create a workspace of your own that you share with other users:

• Select File New Workspace from the top menu or click on the in the action shortcut bar. Enter name and an optional description of the new workspace.

• Go to the ‘Members’ section of the action form and select the future members of your workspace:

• Select the ‘Enter email addresses or user names’ option of the drop down menu, enter email addresses of people already registered on your BSCW server (you probably won’t know their precise BSCW user names) or of people you want to invite to register with your BSCW server (if your server allows self-registration) and hit [Add].

• Alternatively, choose the option ‘Search for BSCW users’ and enter a search string which is meant to be part of a user name. Select any candidates from the search results and hit [Add] again. You can combine both methods of specifying members.

• Select the role ‘Member’ for the members of your workspace and enter an optional invitation text that will be added to invitation emails to be sent to members that you have invited to register.

• Hit [OK] to create the new workspace (for the time being, forget about the other options offered in the action form: tags, auto-versioning, attributes). If you have not explicitly de-selected the respective check boxes, a contact list and a group calendar will be created inside the new workspace for sharing appointments or contact information.

Open the new workspace, load up some documents you want to share with the members of the new workspace, create a new discussion forum within the workspace or call a meeting in the workspace’s calendar.

For a more in-depth discussion of shared workspaces see 4.4 Creating and managing shared workspaces and 4.5 Workspace membership.

Note: Don’t confuse workspaces and communities. When starting work with BSCW, you will most probably want to create a workspace and not a community. Communities are meant to accommodate very large groups of users with shared interests and have their specific limitations as far as access rights are concerned.