These are some of the questions CIARIS users have made concerning the site's usability.  

I've just registered to the website. Where do I go?

You can start by exploring the menus on the left side of the screen. These menus "follow" you everywhere in the site, so you can access their options at any time, making more easy the site's navigation.

On the first menu on the left side of the screen you have, bellow your photo, several options. Try clicking on "Edit Profile", where you can tell us more about yourself. The Profile is a way for others to know a bit more about you and for you to know other people's areas of interest and expectations. Don't forget to upload your photo!

You can also go to the People's Directory to see who else is part of the CIARIS Network and, by clicking on their photos, you can view their profile, learn more about them or even contact them.

It might be also interesting for you to take a look at the Workspaces Directory. You get to know what people in the CIARIS Community are doing and, if you are interested in what they are doing, you can ask to join the workspaces.

If you want to see CIARIS resources, then go to the Library and browse around. There are lots of interesting documents and files you can read directly in the site or download to your computer.

How do I contact people from CIARIS Network?

CIARIS website has an internal message system you can use to send messages to other members of the community.

You can do it by:

1. clicking on the photo of the person when you see her online,
2. going to People's Directory, find the person you're looking for and click on that person's photo. 

How do I find someone in the site?

There are several ways to find someone your are looking for in the site:

1. you can look in the People's Directory - all CIARIS members are there, listed alphabetically;
2. in the People's Directory you can see the menus on the left side of the screen, just bellow the "Online Now" menu. There you can find the "Tag Cloud for People" which gathers all tags people have used to describe themselves. So if you want to meet someone who is interested in "knowledge management", just click on that expression in the Tag Cloud and you will see the list of people who tagged themselves as being interested in that subject;
3. still on the People's Directory you can search people by country (see the menu on the very bottom left of the screen);
4. in the Community main page you have a search engine to look for people, workspaces or blogs.
   

How do I delete my profile?

Currently there is no way to deactivate your profile. If you want to leave CIARIS, you should delete the profile information and  unsubscribe from everything.

How do I change my site language?

You can navigate the site in four languages (for the time being): English, French, Portuguese and Spanish.

To change the site language is quite simple:

Go to the "Site Language" menu on the left side of the screen (just above the "Online Now" menu) and select the language you feel more comfortable in browsing the site.

What is a wiki?

A wiki is a way for you to create content in the site. You can insert text, photos/images and create links to other web pages.

Since it's online, any member of your workspace can edit a wiki that has been created by another member, allowing everyone from your workgroup to contribute to the document you are trying to produce in that wiki. So a wiki is a shared tool that allows the members of a workspace to do a collective effort of knowledge production and sharing.

In the wiki list you can see all main wikis and access the sub wikis that have been created. In a way, it looks like a system of folders where you have a main folder and in it you see the sub-folders, which helps to better organise and share information between the members.

If you want to share the content of a wiki with the rest of the CIARIS community, just click "make this wiki public" and after you categorize it, it will appear in the Library.

Set up the link in the normal way (use link button in WYSIWYG - third from the left, second row down). But instead of putting the complete link, you put the link without www.ciaris.org

Example

This link:
www.ciaris.org/community/wiki/page/334

would look like this:
/community/wiki/page/334

Question: "I’m finishing the text for the Strategic Principles dashboard and I’m trying to create a link to the strategic principles workspace but I can’t find the right “route”. I tried something like this: <a href="community/workspace/dashboard/51"> contribute to the resources on strategic principles </a>, but it’s obviously not the right one and I don’t know where to look for it. Can you give the right code? "

Answer: Almost! You have to remember the slash before, so the right code looks like this:
<a href="/community/workspace/dashboard/51"> contribute to the resources on strategic principles </a>

If you are copy/pasting from one place to another, you should make sure that you are not also copy/pasting all the html as it will mess up your text. There are two ways to avoid this:

1. Copy paste your text first into Notepad (Microsoft) or TextEdit (Mac). This should "clean" the html. Do NOT copy/paste into a Word document as this will make things worse.

2. If you know html, then click on the "Toggle HTML source" (third from the right, second row down of your WYSIWYG) and make sure that your html is clean.

Here is an example of html that has been picked up from another source and which will mess up the formatting. Everything underlined in pink is unnecessary....

­ ­

3. Make tea for and be nice to someone who knows html and can help you.

How do I change the name of a Wiki?

Sorry, for now you can't.

How do I change the order of a wiki page in the wiki index?

Sorry, for now you can't.

How can I insert a photo or a picture?

To insert a photo or a picture in the CIARIS website you need to have it stored in the internet (photos/pictures stored in your computer won't do), in a website like Flickr, for example.

If you want to insert a photo/picture in a wiki or in your workspace dashboard, first you have to copy the URL (the address) of the photo/picture you want to select.

Then click on this icon  ­in the tool bar that you can find in every text box when creating wikis, making the summaries for the documents to publish in the Library or when editing your workspace dashboard, and paste the photo/picture's URL in the box that appears.

Then click ok and update the changes.

This may happen for several reasons.

One may be the browser you're using. Users have experienced several problems in visualising the site when using Internet Explorer. They have encountered similar problems, bugs, and the navigation is slower.

We suggest you to try using another browser like Mozilla Firefox­. It's faster and it doesn't create as much problems as Internet Explorer. But if you can't download it or if­ you prefer to keep using Internet Explorer, then we suggest you update your version.

Another possible reason may be that the website you're using to store the photo/image you're trying to insert is being blocked. This can happen, for example, if your computer is connected to a network and the system doesn't allow you to view images/photos from that source.

In this case, you can either ask for permission to view photos/images from that specific source or you can try to use a different website to store your photos/images. ­

If you still have problems, then please contact us. We will do our best to find a solution!

How can I stay informed of what is going on in the site?

You can stay informed of what is happening in CIARIS by choosing to be notified by e-mail or by RSS Feeds.

You can subscribe to be notified about your CIARIS inbox latest messages, about the new announcements in CIARIS.org main page and about the workspaces you're a member.

In the workspaces, on the menu on the bottom left side of the screen (just bellow the "Online Now" widget) you can see the option Workspace Feeds. By clicking there, you are able to choose to be notified of what is new in your workspace by e-mail or by RSS Feeds.

­­You can also choose to be notified about everything happening in your workspace or only about certain things (such as about new wikis created or about new blog posts).

A tag is a way to label everything in the site. You can tag people, workspaces and documents with keywords.

When you're in People's or in Blog's Directory, or when you're reading a document in the Library, you can see two menus with tags on the bottom left side of your screen (right below the "Online Now" widget).

The first menu, the "Tag Cloud", shows the tags that the community created; the second menu indicates the tags you have created.

Example: "Bridges for Inclusion" workspace was tagged by its administrator as "Bridges", but each member can tag differently, using one or more tags.  So, workspace member A can tag the workspace with "project" and B can tag it with "employment" and "inclusion". Each tag will appear in the workspace "Tag Cloud": Bridges, project, employment and inclusion.

I've changed the name of my workspace. Do I need validation from the site manager to do that?

No, the site manager doesn't validate or makes any kind of control over the actions or activities developed in the workspaces.

It's the workspace administrator's responsability to edit the name and description of the workspace, to make the decision to close the workspace, to accept or reject new members into the workspace, to define the role of the members (as users or administrators) or to delete them from the workspace.

The activities developed within the workspace are of the fully responsability of the workspace administrators and members.

Who controls the site?

How is the site organised?

CIARIS has three main domains: homepage (ciaris.org), community and library.

In the homepage, users can have a glimpse of what is happening in the site: the announcements made by the site faciliators, latest members who just joined the community, latest workspaces that have been created, latest content published in the library as well as the latest blog posts from the workspaces.

Within "community", members can access several directories concerning users and their activities: Workspaces directory (all the workspaces created by CIARIS members), People directory (where you can view all CIARIS members, check out their profile and contact them) and Blogs directory (where you can see all blogs created by the members, both personal and from the workspaces).

In the "Library", users can research the documents produced by CIARIS and also by its members. Any member can produce a certain document in his/her workspace and, if he/she wishes it, can make it public in the library for all users to access.

For further details on this matter, please see the screencasts about the CIARIS site­ (available in English and Portuguese), under "Help Guides" in the Library.

CIARIS facilitation: how is it done and who are the facilitators?

CIARIS website is facilitated by Beverly Trayner (as community adviser) and by Carla Alcobia (as community facilitator).

Their role within CIARIS is to keep the website alive, managing activities, promoting events, thinking of ways to improve the website, facilitating interactions between the users and helping the users through the discovery and navigation of the site.

Through their work they try to develop a community of practice with all of those who share this tool.