In BSCW, every user has direct access to a number of personal objects, the icons of which are shown in the instant access bar in the upper right-hand corner of the Web-based user interface. The instant access bar is present in each of your folder pages.
The personal objects cannot be shared with other users of your BSCW server.
Personal portal
Home folder
Communities
Clipboard
Trash
Address book
Calendar
Task list
Bookmarks
Personal templates
Briefcase
Your personal
portal for BSCW can show the contents of important workspaces, an
overview of recent BSCW events, current appointments from your BSCW calendar or
your BSCW microblog messages. Your portal is configured by yourself.
Your home folder is your
personal workspace, which may only be accessed by yourself and which contains
all folders that you have created and all workspaces where you have been invited
as a member. When you click your home folder icon from within other personal
objects, you return to the workspace that you viewed last; clicking again on the
home folder icon brings you indeed to your home folder.
The listing of your community
workspaces contains all such workspaces with communities where you
are a member. Communities allow workspace access for large groups of users
equipped with equal access rights keeping performance independent of community
size; they also offer self-organized platforms for users with similar interests.
The address book is mainly used
to invite new members to your workspaces.
The calendar helps you manage your
appointments. In addition to this personal calendar, BSCW offers group
calendars to support cooperation in arbitrary workspaces. These group
calendars are stored in the respective workspaces.
This personal data area
contains the tasks that you are to carry out (includes
proper tasks, tasks in flow folders and documents to be released). The icon
changes its appearance if there are tasks for you to carry out.
Bookmarks offer quick access to
important objects. This personal data area contains those bookmarks that you
have collected.
The personal templates
contain templates for often-used objects
(e.g. documents, folder structures) that you have defined for copying from, and
metadata profiles that you have defined
in addition to the predefined system profiles.
The briefcase contains documents
you want to have synchronized with their counterparts on your local computer.
Personal portal, bookmarks, personal templates, clipboard and trash are described in more detail in the following subsections.