Orchestralist System Pages at Groups.io
 

USING the ORCHESTRALIST SYSTEM PAGES at GROUPS.IO

To go straight to the orchestralist online groups.io pages, jump to http://groups.io/g/orchestralist in your browser, login, and start working.

(Otherwise if you wish to operate just from your email client, the list of available email commands for subscribing, email options, etc. are found here, or you could also send an email addressed to orchestralist+help@groups.io to get a summary list of these. An explanation of how to deal with messages, individual or digests, et. al. by email alone is found here.)

This page discusses:

  1. Logging in to orchestralist at groups.io
  2. What you see on your home page
  3. Viewing/Editing your subscription options
  4. Viewing/Responding to/Starting new- messages
  5. Other features, may or may not be unlocked

Logging in to orchestralist at groups.io

Although you can operate basic orchestralist mail and subscription options by sending emails to the system, there are other things you can do only on the groups.io system pages which require you to log-in there.

The first time you log-in to any groups.io group you must set a password. If you already belong to another groups.io group and had set up a password, then you already have the ability to logon to orchestralist. The password covers all groups of groups.io that you are a member of - if you've used the same email address.

  • Setting your password. You are going to go online where you can request setting up a password. Part of the process will send you an email with a link in it which will bring you back online with a page to enter your password.

    1. In your browser, go to the address http://groups.io/g/orchestralist and enter your email address associated with orchestralist.
    2. Click on the link that says you don't have a password, and it will send you an email.
    3. In the email, click on the link that says it will direct you to the page where you can enter a password.
    4. Enter your new password on this page. Note it does not ask you to repeat the password as a check, so be careful!
    5. Click on Set Password, and you are now logged in to groups.io. It will probably show you as being in your "Feed".
    6. To select the orchestralist group (even if that's the only one you are a member of), you can either click on the picture to the left of our group title in the feed, or use the pull-down on top that says "Your Groups" to select orchestralist. Now you are at the orchestralist home page.

  • Logging in. (To login any time you already have a password set.) In your browser, go to the address http://groups.io/g/orchestralist. This puts you on the orchestralist home page. Click on "Log-in If You Are Already A Member" - the green button down the page. You will be prompted for your email address and password. Enter and hit the LogIn button. You are now logged in at the orchestralist home page.

    Note, if you had instead hit the Blue button on top right of the page to do the login, that would log you into "Your Feed" for the groups.io system (all groups you are associated with), and then you could choose which groups.io group to move to.

[the "Your Feed" idea is somewhat new to groups.io, and there's lots of discussion about how it's implemented. I can easily see changes coming, but we'll see.]

Your Home Page

A sample of the navigation options on your home page is to the left. If you happen to be a member of more than one groups.io group, you can switch between them via the pulldown at the top labeled "Your Groups".

We will be discussing the links on the left for "Subscription", "Messages", "New Topic" and "Wiki". The other options are probably turned off for now (let's get our feet wet first before trying out new features.)

These links on the left will remain on the pages for instant access as you navigate around the system, and this panel is in the upper left corner of your screen.

The rest of the home page will have lots of information about the orchestralist group.

Your Subscription

Clicking on the Subscription link brings you to a new page that allows you to change your email delivery options, supply signature lines for your posts (they will appear at the bottom of each email you send), choose some advanced email preferences, and make changes to your profile (online persona).

Basic Mail Options

To choose one of these options just click in the circle selector before the option you want. You can receive individual messages as they are sent, a digest (there are three kinds), or just special notices from the moderators (hence, none from other members). The three kinds of digests are:

  • Full Digest - Fully formatted digest of emails over the day, up to 12 messages per digest.
  • Plain Digest - Plainly formatted digest of emails over the day, up to 12 messages per digest.
  • Title (a.k.a., Summary) Digest - Each morning, a list of all the titles of messages sent since the previous morning.

When you receive a summary digest or a plain digest in your email, there are a number of links you can click on to view, reply to, etc. but you will be required to login to orchestralist online to do so. For summary digests, your can click on a message title to bring up that message, or other links such as to create a new topic, go to all of your messages, edit your subscription, or go to the orchestralist home page - all of which bring you to a login to orchestralist at groups.io.

Similarly, when you receive a plain digest, there are links you can click on, to view a message, reply to a message or to mute it's topic - these links will take you to a login screen for orchestralist; after the login you will be positioned at the message in question. There are also links at the bottom to go to the orchestralist home page on groups.io, or to change your subscription.

Full digests also list a series of links under each message, but to reply to sender or group, or muting the topic, or creating a new topic, this will only bring up your email client so you don't have to log-in. There is also a link to view/reply to the message online, where you would have to log-in. Muting a topic means you are not interested in seeing it's (future) messages.

Advanced Mail Options

These will be discussed at a later time, but you may wish to look over the "Following Only" options allowing you to only get messages in topics that you tag as interesting to you.

Your Profile

At the top of the Subscription page there are several buttons for other things. The Email options already discussed fall under the Membership button. Selecting the "Group Profile" button brings you to a page that allows you to edit your profile. Click on that "Edit Group Profile" button, and amongst other things you can upload a photo, set your user name and display name (listed with your posts).

Dealing with Messages

When logged in to the orchestralist group, you can see all messages going as far back as we were able to extract them from YahooGroups. You can see messages or topics, newest first, defaulting to topic view. A topic is a message and all of its replies.

Existing Messages

From the orchestralist home page of groups.io click on the "Messages" link on the left navigation pane. From top to bottom there will be the newest list of topics going back in time. There is a number in a gray oval after each topic title which indicates how many messages there are in that topic. The topic title is the title of the first message that started the topic. Every time someone replies to a message in this topic, it is considered part of the same topic.

Messages vs. Topics There is a blue pull-down list just above the first topic/message, which allows you to switch between topic view and individual message view. In topic view, if you click on a title, the display changes to show all the messages of that topic. You can also select expanded topic view showing all of the messages that are part of each topic. So basically you can see the entire conversation for that topic, then the next topic, and so on.

In message view, the display shows individual messages as they occurred in time, newest first by default. When individual messages are displayed you can also specify "More" (with the three stacked lines in front) and this will give you the option to see a list of all messages by the member who wrote that particular message. In addition, if you are the author of that message, you will also have further options there - you can edit the message, delete it or view the source.

Replying to a Message If you hit Reply under a particular message, you are given a formatting box to create the reply. You also have the ability to quote part of the message you are replying to. To do this just highlight the text you want to quote; use your mouse, dragging it from one end to the other, and then hit the Reply. The highlighted text will appear in your reply box as "quoted text". Then you can continue to create your reply as usual.

You can do the usual formatting tricks as in many word processors or email programs, such as bold, italic, make numbered and unordered lists, insert (web) links, insert pictures, attach files, align left, center or right. There is also a set of advanced editing tools which will show when you select its icon, the last icon on the format bar (three stacked short lines). This lets you choose fonts, sizes, colors, etc. Note, if you had set up signature lines in your email subscription options, they will be displayed in the initially empty message reply box.

Reply to Group or Sender When you are finished entering your message you have the ability to send the message either to the group (the default), or if you click on the "Private" button first (far right under the message), this will cause the message to only be sent to the sender of the message you are replying to.

Creating a New Topic/Message

Instead of replying to an existing message you can create a new message with a new subject line (which makes it the first message in a new topic.) To do this, click on the "New Topic" link in the left side navigation bar. This will bring up almost the exact same editing box for messages that you get when replying to a message. The difference is that you only get a "Send" button, no reply or private buttons. You have the identical controls and options in creating this new message as when you reply to a message. When you are done, hit the "Send" button below the message box, and off it goes.

Other Features

  • WIKI. This is our own personal "encyclopedia" set of pages - named after the web's Wikipedia. Initially it will contain some links to other places such as our orchestralist.net website where you can look up information on what you can do with our orchestralist groups.io group. We can decide to put anything we want here that we think will be helpful.
  • There are many other links (even Yahoo Groups had some of these), including files, pictures and polls. For now we haven't allowed these to be created (or at least only by a moderator). All of these things take up space and may need some organizing and moderating, and we will probably be operating as a free group with limited space available. Message space is entirely free, these others are not if we go beyond our initial limits of space.

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