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Before you can begin working as an administrator, you must understand the structure of the administrator’s account and how users communicate with your server.
Organizing people and communications on your system
Before you start adding users to your system, you should take some time to think about how they will use the system and what you want them to do or not do. You need to think about the different groups of users you’ll have, their needs, your system needs (like performance and security), and your system limitations (like disk space, memory, and number of sessions).
Once you understand what your users need and what your limits are, you can start considering how FirstClass can meet those needs.
• Privileges let you control a user’s access to FirstClass features and the FirstClass Directory.
• Permissions let you control who uses conferences and calendars and how they use them.
• Model Desktops let you control what users will see when they log in
• Gateways allow you to expand the scope of your FirstClass system.
This section is merely an introduction to the concepts we will discuss in detail later in this online help system.
Thinking about your organization’s structure
Your organization probably already has groups defined. For example, in a business environment the groups of people who will use your system might be Employees, Managers, Customers, and Suppliers. At an educational site the groups of people who will use your system might be Faculty, Administrators, Students, and Parents. You might also group them based on the department they are in or the building where they are located. Some people might belong to more than one group — for example, members of the Managers group are also members of the Employees group, or members of the Administrators group might also be members of the Faculty group. Whatever group structure you choose, it should reflect the logical divisions within your organization and how those divisions are reflected in privileges.
If there is no existing structure in your organization, think about the kinds of people who will be using your FirstClass system and their particular communication needs. Find the common factors, and establish a suitable name for each group of people. Determine how you want your system to meet the needs of each group.
Once you have such a structure in place, you can assign privileges to the groups rather than to the individual users. This process provides you with two advantages:
• It’s easier and more efficient to set the privileges for a user group and then add users to that group than it is to set privileges individually for each user.
• You can be sure that all users in a specific user group have the same privileges. You’ll probably need this kind of consistency since all users in, for example, the same department will need the same privileges.
 NotePrivileges can be overridden at the user level, if required.
Thinking about how users communicate
So far, you’ve thought about how people are organized in your company or school. Now you have to think about how people will communicate on your system. Do you want one-to-one communication, one-to-many, many-to-many, or a combination of these? To put it in more technical terms, you have to decide whether users will be relying on direct email, mail lists, or conferences to meet their communication needs.
The following scenarios can help you decide how to best handle your users' communication needs:
Business environment
• When we were first setting up our groups, we decided that customers would communicate with us through conferences. So we know that we need to set up some customer conferences that all customers and some employees have access to.
• Different employees are involved in different projects. Some of those will probably use conferences for communications. Setting them up and subscribing employees will be an ongoing process. However, there are some conferences that all employees should have access to. These will be conferences dealing with company policy, company announcements, and a general discussion conference where employees can communicate with each other about various job related issues.
• Managers require some conferences. These will be used to collaborate about personnel issues, company policy, budgets, and business plans. Since these conferences will contain confidential material, as will the managers’ Mailboxes, we’ll have to set them up so no employees can access them. The only exception to this will be some of our IT personnel. Since we are giving them administration authority, we can’t stop them from seeing conferences. But we can make it difficult for them by implementing some security measures we discussed here.
• Since projects run on timetables with interrelated key dates, each project will need a group calendar so everyone involved can see critical dates. Managers and employees will also need personal calendars so they can book meetings and track their individual work activities.
• We want a mail list with the email addresses of our resellers so we can send them regular updates.
Education environment
• We decided that students would communicate through conferences. We need to set up some student conferences that all students in a given course and their instructors have access to.
• Teachers will use conferences for communications about their individual departments and courses. Setting them up and subscribing teachers will be an ongoing process. However, there are some conferences that all teachers should have access to. These will be conferences dealing with school policy, school announcements, and a general discussion conference where teachers can communicate with each other about various work related issues.
• School administrators require some conferences. These will be about personnel issues, creating and implementing the school policy, budget, and business plan. Since these conferences will contain confidential material, as will the administrators’ Mailboxes, we’ll have to set them up so no other users can access them. The only exception to this will be some of our IT personnel. Since we are giving them administration authority, we can’t stop them from seeing conferences, but we can make it difficult for them by implementing some security measures we discussed here.
• Since classes have timetables with key dates (like final exams), each class will need a group calendar so everyone involved can see critical dates. Administrators and teachers will also need personal calendars so they can book meetings and track their individual work activities.
• We want a mailing list with the email addresses of parents.
Thinking about Desktop layout
Model Desktops control what users see when they log in. Since all of your groups have different needs, you may want them to see different things when they log in.
For example, in Husky Planes, a business site:
• we want customers to communicate through conferences, so their Desktops will have those conferences clearly visible
• employees will need to see the conferences important to them
• managers’ Desktops will have both employee and management conferences on them
• IT personnel will need the same features as employees with a few extra items to help them do their jobs.
Using gateways to expand your FirstClass system
A gateway is a bridge between your system and another device or system. FirstClass supports several types of gateways:
• server-to-server gateways
• gateways to other email systems
• outbound gateways
• inbound gateways.
For additional information:
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