TRICKS & TECH TIPS IN MANAGING A FIRST CLASS BULLETIN BOARD
excerpted from chapter 2 (Nothing but Net) pages 17-54 in the Summercore Primer on Hardware, Software
and Humanware (481 pages)
written and published by Steve Bergen and Lynne Schalman
available for $50 plus shipping/handling via The Original Teaching Company (781-862-8810)
PO Box E, Lexington MA 02421
Copyright 1991-95, 98. All rights reserved
e-mail:
web site: www.nobleseweb.org/sc.html

Adding Identifier to Suffix (e.g. Year of Graduation) to the Last Name
At Nobles, the last name of a faculty member has a suffix of -fac, the last name of a visitor has a suffix of -vis, the last name of a parent has a suffix of -par, the last name of a trustee has a suffix of -tr and each student has a suffix of -98 or -99 or -00 based on year of graduation. At first, we did this with a separating space and found out that this messed up the "reply" feature of many internet outsiders. We then eliminated the space, changing for example the Pitino (fac) to be Pitino-fac. We have found this to be a very useful system, helping to identify "who's who" easily and quickly when getting e-mail and being in chat rooms.

Assignment Turn-in via Conferences
At Nobles, students in numerous classes are told to turn in assignments by sending the NoblesNet note to the CP1 Noteboard, the Spanish IV Conf perhaps with a cc to the specific teacher. The advantage of this system is that the conference holds the e-mail for a longer period of time and is more easily organized.

Auto-Open Note in Auto-Open News
It took me a lot longer than it should have to learn how to do this: make a document within auto-open news, then choose GET INFO to make the document be protected and auto-open, then close up and save the document and tag it as "unread" before quitting.

Avoiding any use of master admin at school due to KeyStroke Recorders
At Nobles, we have had two significant hassles of students installing a keystroke recorder on a computer and ascertaining passwords. These keystroke recorders easily get under protection software such as foolproof. Consequently, I have now followed the advice passed on to me by Christopher Smick, Director of Administrative Computing here at Nobles which is to never use the master First Class password on campus. Several of us use our sub-admin accounts frequently on campus, but have never yet been snagged by a keystroke recorder. However, I have been faithful to this advice about never using the master admin code on campus and at least psychologically feel more secure about our system.

Avoiding linkage to a file server
At Nobles, we experimented initially with a file server folder that could be accessed from NoblesNet. We hit the templeton effect occasionally of the file server going down which of course caused the error message on the NoblesNet server that waited for you to push return to continue. With enough other management headaches, we decided the upside was not worth it. The Templeton effect, by the way, was derived from John Templeton, former director of admissions at St. Mark's and is really the computer version of the "law of unintended consequences." Each time you do something particularly technically clever, you frequently cause negative consequences that make the user/consumer wish you had never been so clever!

Backing up via Timbuktu (remotely) to a Jaz Drive
At Nobles, the backing up of our First Class data has been an ongoing chore. Keeping partitions under 250 meg has been helpful. Using a Jaz drive has been helpful. The system has to go down during a backup. The data from each partition is then dragged to a folder on the Jaz drive. Using Timbuktu via TCP access, I can log in to the server and do these actions from home. Each folder drag can take a few hours, however. Occasionally, a screen freeze occurs and then it is off to plan B, having to go to school to reset the server. I have avoided using Retrospect for incremental backups, but I am not sure this has been wise; I have been trying to keep the entire data together in one backup so that I can easily restore if necessary. Our disastrous experience in fall 1995 when we lost the entire system and had to start from square one has made me fairly neurotic about the backups.

Creating Accounts via Batch Admin
This is a one line command that you send as a note to "batch admin" that creates an account and puts the new user into designated privilege groups. The typical line is
add telecom acc999 Tim "" "Duncan-new" "" password "" "" "" 2 "N License" newstudents
but the real power gets achieved via a spreadsheet

add telecom	ng98001	Mary	"Lee **2004"	av3	#	"" "" 2 "temp" newstudents398
add telecom	ng98208	Amelia	"Ali **2003"	bt5	#	"" "" 2 "temp" newstudents398

Creating Fake Accounts for multiple recipients
This is a trick that we have used repeatedly. If someone writes to admissions@nobles.edu, we want several people to get the e-mail. We create a fake account with no first name and last name of admissions. We give this fake user auto-forwarding ability and then have any mail sent to this account automatically forwarded to several people in the admissions office.

Creating our own Forms for N License and Internet Upgrades
At Nobles, we have designed several "built-in" forms that are part of the distribution disks for both Mac and PC users. This is fairly time-consuming and fairly technical, but the payoff can be significant.

Faculty-Only Conferences for Cut Slips, Work Orders, Academic Warnings, Field Trips
At Nobles, we have a private conference called Faculty Only that students do not see. Within this conference are numerous conferences for adult eyes only. One conference is used for sending cut slips on a daily basis, another is used for sending work orders that the maintenance dept processes, another is used for issuing academic warnings or posting info on field trips.

Fake "Info" accounts for easily accessible info in the resumes
At Nobles, we have about 15 fake accounts with names like Info CompDept, Info CompPurchasing, Info Calendar, Info StudentsAdvisors and Info Phones. We use the RESUME of these fake account for information, since any sub-admin can easily edit or copy/paste info into the RESUME. This allows almost everyone to access info quickly by looking at the resume of one of these fake people.

Insight on who can edit text in a conference
At Nobles, it took us a while to realize that even admins cannot automatically edit any text in a conference; in order to edit text, you need to be the controller of that conference.

Internet E-mail Shortcuts for First Class and the Gateway
At Nobles, we have popularized the trick when e-mail arrives in via the gateway, it will get to the person if it has a unique name. Therefore, if there is only one pitino at Nobles, the address can be pitino@nobles.edu; for some faculty members with hyphenated names or dual names (e.g. Richard Baker or Dick Baker) we use the trick of adding to the "master file of aliases" on the gateway machine. Also notice below that we have used this to prevent e-mail spam to students_all@nobles.edu and to advertise a job via job@nobles.edu instead of wasting an account with auto-forward.
# This file is the user alias file
# The format of a user alias entry is:
# "<alias>", "<FC user name>", "<FC server site name>"
"bergen","Steve Bergen","NoblesNet"
"job", "Steve Bergen", "NoblesNet"
"Dick_Baker", "Richard Baker", "NoblesNet"
"Students_All", "Steve Bergen", "NoblesNet"

Keeping partitions under 200 meg or 250 meg with external library
At Nobles, our Quadra 950 Server has 4 partitions of about 250 meg. We run NoblesNet off two of the four, using a third one to avoid disk fragmentation software by dragging entire post office from partition x to newly formatted partition y occasionally. We use the fourth partition as a library of external files that users can access in "read-only" mode.

ListServ Trick#1: Creating a Fake Account and wiring to conference
This is one of two ways that we have dealt with the institutional desire of having a listserv be public. We subscribe through a fake account and then create a conference with the same name as the account which is subsequently deleted. E-mail via the listserv comes in to that person and goes to the conference.

ListServ Trick#2: Making an Alias of a folder within someone's mailbox
This is the other way. We have had certain users subscribe to a listserv and then put files from the listserv into a designated folder within their mailbox. We then make an alias of that folder and put it within a public conference.

Mailing Lists labelled with (ML) and associated netiquette
At Nobles, every mailing list is labelled with a suffix of (ML) so that it is very easy to recognize. You can just type (ML) and get a master list of lists. No student is allowed to use a mailing list. Each time it happens, the student gets his/her account frozen and needs to see a computer teacher before regaining access. The system follows the guidelines of KIS (keep it simple) and has worked very well.
Moderating Conferences by Two People
At Nobles, the standard specification has become that for each general interest conference, the founder must be joined by a faculty member or student staff member in maintaining the quality of the conference. We set our conference notes to auto-expire after 66 files and do not allow moderators to create sub-folders. All notes in conferences require a moderator to approve them before being read.

Privilege Groups for Temporary, N License, G license, Student Staff
At Nobles, we have a plethora of privilege groups for special cases. Temporary licensed students have 25 minutes of daily time and no chatting. The specs for N license include 72 minutes, view history, chatting on line and resume. Generous students who work for the computer dept get 144 minutes per day plus the ability to send attached files. Student Staff members get the ability to view the user id forms and in some cases edit the forms re password confusion and/or privilege groups.

Keeping Schedules in the resumes
At Nobles, we have a schedule template that contains the 9 period for the 5 days of the week. We post and distribute this template frequently and then get students and faculty members to maintain their schedules within their resumes. These resumes also contain home phone number, address, advisor name, etc.

Parentnet Coordinators for helping new parents on line
At Nobles, there is a team of several parents who help new parents with their NoblesNet accounts. We charge $66 per year for a parent to keep his/her account and consider the ongoing project an experiment. About 90 parents have accounts.

Posting Sounds for French/Spanish Exercises
At Nobles, modern language teachers have occasionally used NoblesNet to post sounds that students would then be assigned to play and transcribe.

Private Conference for Hiring Feedback
At Nobles, we have a private conference called Interview Feedback on the desktop of the headmaster and several other key administrators. Each time someone is interviewed for a job at Nobles, the faculty member is asked to write a paragraph to the conference called Interview Feedback.

Private Conferences that are read-only
At Nobles, each student staff member has a private conference that computer teachers can mail to; the student staff member has read-only privileges, so that this conference serves as a log-book of sent messages for the record.

Private Conferences that preserve Mail beyond 8 Days
At Nobles, we have so much daily e-mail traffic that we have had to change the spec for expiring mail from 33 days to 8 days; computer teachers have numerous files that are assignments for classes and therefore have private conferences. They can then move e-mail in batches from personal mailbox to designated private conference so that all of this mail is automatically preserved beyond 8 days.

TCP Connecting In
At Nobles, we have spread the popularity of accessing TCP from home and then connecting to NoblesNet via TCP instead of modem. Even though we have 16 dial-in modem lines, there is still congestion during peak hours on NoblesNet, so TCP helps!

Typing Scores using Subject Line
At Nobles, there is a conference that we use for keeping track of students' typing efforts. Students are directed to send a NoblesNet note to that conference, with nothing in the body of the note and their typing score or practice time in the subject. The folder is then easily sorted by name or subject.

ADVANCED FIRST-CLASS TRICKS

Accessing the settings file When you buy First Class, there is a special application program that is capable of loading and modifying a settlings file. What is a settings file? Well, when you connect via network, modem or TCP to a server, you have in effect loaded a settings file into your First Class software. Although it is possible to choose NEW SETTING, most of us just load the software and take the settings file for granted. This file contains the sounds that you will hear when using that First Class system, this icons that represent the conferences, the graphics and sounds that users see as part of any conference.

First Class Designer The software program called First Class Designer allows you to open a settings file and to modify it. Although the interface is a bit non-intuitive to use, trial and error, reading the manual or instruction from someone makes it relatively manageable to create your own settings file.

Graphic As you copy and paste a PICT graphic into this settings file, either the name of the file or its resource number is critical. If you want the file to be the "SPLASH SCREEN," then it needs a resource ID of 1000. If you want the graphic to be a background for a conference (e.g. Celtics), then its name needs to begin with cuc and be followed by the conference name (e.g. cucCeltics).

Icons Files of icons can be made with an icon-design program or with res-edit on the Mac. Each icon also has a resource number. The manual lists the number of commonly used icons. Unless you are seeking to replace commonly used First Class icons, the acceptable range is 28000 to 29000. Icons are generally 32 pixels by 32 pixels in size, although First Class support icons of any shape or size.

Sounds Sound variations can also be used to customize your settings file. As with graphics, the interface is to COPY and then PASTE each sound into your settings file, subsequently assigning the key number which identifies function, e.g. 137 for Logoff, or 136 for Search Completed. To assign a sound to a conference when it opens, the sound name must match the name of the conference, e.g. Celtics.

Forms First Class Designer also support forms so that you can design a screen form that will match a paper form or perhaps customized for a specific purpose.