SEEKN Guide

version 1.0

Content
SEEKN Guide............................................................................................................................................1
Virtual community integration...................................................................................................................2
First step – registering and initial configuration...................................................................................2
Step 2 – general details about yourself..................................................................................................2
Step 3 – GROUPS, different levels of access and involvement............................................................4
Step 4 – Building a profile....................................................................................................................5
Step 5 – Building a portfolio.................................................................................................................9
Step 6 – Elaborate the generic presentation – profile view.................................................................13
Step 7 - Personalised views................................................................................................................19
Step 8 – Groups and forums ...............................................................................................................23
Step 9 - Settings and messages............................................................................................................26
FOR THE QUICK JUMPERS.................................................................................................................27
I have registered now what?................................................................................................................27
Where do I go to fill a profile?............................................................................................................27
How do I join a group?........................................................................................................................27
How do I check my messages?............................................................................................................28

by Constantinescu Nicolaie

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Virtual community integration

First step – registering and initial configuration

In order to join our virtual community of practice, first you have to Register from the main page at
http://hive.kosson.ro .

Illustration 1: Register new user

This step will be complete after filling the form and click Register.

Illustration 2: Filling registration form

Please take care of CAPTCHA as you have to pay attention to the characters in CAPS.

Step 2 – general details about yourself

If you have not already login to the system, this is a very good moment to do so. Starting this moment
you will have access to all configuration menus and most important thing is that you have access to all
the features needed to build the online e-portfolio.

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 Illustration 3: Authenticate to the system

From the start page on the right side there are the groups you have already joined in. If you just arrived,
no group will be shown to you as you were not invited nor joined one. Because one of the purposes of
this platform is to build communication among specialists, I invite you to search for the public groups
and join those you feel your contribution would be more welcomed. Please do not forget that the
primary purpose of this who's who is to build an online e-portfolio to reflect competencies and skills of
each and everyone of the participating specialists.

Illustration 4: Editing about section

The first step to do after login is to edit About me section that contains the details seen for the first
time at a short glance by your fellow colleagues meaning the details regarding means of contacting and

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some introductory words that is like a short characterisation filled at introduction. Also you may put in
the general details of your profile. If your fellow colleagues know you by a preferred name, this may
be introduced here also.

Illustration 5: Every profile field is a separate artefact

Some things should be taken into consideration even at this early step when first information starts the
e-portfolio. That would be the degree of exposure of contact data and any other data that the
participants may consider that they belong to a restricted class. We have to take into account that all the
information is considered to be artefacts. These artefacts may be added independently to different
views. This views are like facets made by different combinations of artefacts that serve different
purposes like degree of personal involvement and trust established on global level or group level. What
system does very elegantly is to provide means to establish how much personal data gets exposed to
community or working groups. On short a user is able to manage very close the context in which a
piece of information shows up or not.

Step 3 – GROUPS, different levels of access and involvement

I've mentioned earlier before about the granularity that the system is offering regarding who gets access
to what? Some levels of participation may be chosen to be discrete as private groups that are not visible
and only invited persons are aware of.
We will start to analyse the access level offered at the moment but through the eyes of the administrator
as this view is more complete and offers more insight. An administrator (usually the user that has the
power to initiate a group) has the following options when it comes to group visibility settings: he may
declare the group as a visible one setting Publicly Viewable Group to yes or no.

Declaring a group as a public visible one has one of the following effects regarding access:
– group will be viewable by anyone who visits your group;
– everyone will be able to see the group member listing, and see all discussions in the forums;
– people will still have to become a member of the group before they can post to the forums;
– regardless of this setting, your group file section and all files inside it will remain private

It is possible that most of the group existing to be declared since their inception as being Publicly
Viewable Group. Others may be declared as visible, but you have to request membership. After
validation by one of the administrators you will be accepted or the opposite being explained to you the
reason why.

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There are another types of groups different from the visible ones. These groups may be joined after you
have being sent an invitation by one of the group administrators.
The conclusion is that when it comes to groups there is a public and a private side and the types of the
groups may be adjusted to fit different needs.

Illustration 6: Setting groups and access policies

In order to get a general picture, please take a look on Zone A from Conceiving and adjusting the view
for different contexts illustration further bellow. More administrative details on Step 8.

Step 4 – Building a profile

The main reason for deploying this communication platform is to put information science specialists
from different parts of Europe in contact with an accent on Balkan participation. A second objective is
to put one's knowledge and skills in a natural completion of another's thus forming a continuum of
knowledge sharing and continuous building of new professional assets aiming a successful synergistic
interconnection.

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 Imagine these views as if they were projected facets designed to offer
information necessary for the other
Zone members to know you.
A
They may be regarded as bits of
your profile more or less detailed
taken from you personal profile
and put for others knowledge and
information needs

Zone
B

Joining a grup could be done in three

different ways:
- join freelly if that group is public
- by sending a request to join that has to be
validated by one of the group
administrators
- based on invitation when a group exists
but is not visible

Conceiving and adjusting the view for different contexts

Once you have logged in, please access Profile menu and pick Edit Profile - About me.

Illustration 7: Fill in the profile

As you can see from illustration 7, every field of this section (Edit profile), let that be those from About
me, or Contact information, Messaging, and General, are ARTEFACTS – distinct elements, a fragment
of information in itself that could form with other artefacts a view.
This mechanism should be very well understood from the start regarding how views are built. Careful
picked up artefacts may be the constituents of a particular view (facet) made up for a strict
presentational purpose.

Next step is to associate a profile image to the profile (Profile Icons). This will help better the
participating colleagues to associate the expertise with the person. To do this, please access Profile
Icons option and load an image that you consider it best presents you and afterwards confirm the
association ticking Default control. Be careful because the image will not show if you do not confirm
with Default.

Illustration 8: Attach an icon image to your profile

Next step is to fill in the resume accessing My Resumé option. It is true that this operation takes the
most time allocated for establishing a profile. There is the natural temptation to postpone this step until
latter on but it is best to fill in right away or as soon as possible the resume so all the partners to have a

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clearer view to your skills and expertise that you bring to the community.

Illustration 9: Filling in the resume

Remember, please that after filling field after field from a distinct section, you have to confirm to
every and each of then the entry in the database clicking on Save.
There is a section for expressing the personal goals linked directly to your personal professional
evolution and those linked to your academic progress.

Illustration 10: Declaring goals

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Please, access this section (My goals) not only to offer your fellow colleagues clues to what you would
like to accomplish participating to the network, but also to express your willingness to get better in a
certain domain and in this your manifested readiness to accept help and counselling.
Next section you have to fill in belongs to your skills as seen in illustration 11 (skills). In case of a
future partnership it is of the out most importance to have one's skills completing another. This section
may be relevant in this approach and may bring information regarding existing abilities on a certain
professional level that could serve to particular needs.

Illustration 11: Filling in the skills

Step 5 – Building a portfolio

After you have finished the resumé it is very important to add a few necessary information like the
following sections: My Files, My Blogs, and My views. The order I have used to enumerate the
sections it is important as it will lead you to finalisation of the process.

It is recommendable for the moment to ignore section My views as this will gain relevance
after completing the profile view (profile view from the Profile).

If you would like you may add files up to a 50MB personal quota that you think are relevant to your
profile. As a suggestion you may add a full Curriculum Vitae in European format or other files that

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have relevance to your development like the newest articles or any other files you think would be
necessary to share with your partners in the network.

Organising this area may be take the following path:

a. if you do not have many files and you think that you will not add many more in the future, you may
load all the files in the open (like the root directory of your allocated space – Upload file), and they
will be shown right away.
b. if your contributions are of more substance it would be better to organise your files in separate
folders using (Create folder).
Let us look at the simple case of loading a Curriculum Vitae – thought to contain far more information
that the section My Resumé is holding.

Illustration 12: Loading files

As you may see from illustration 12, a document representing a CV will be loaded in PDF format.
There is a very, very important aspect that should not be overlooked easily. We have to take into
consideration the copyright for all the materials you load. It is also a reminder at the loading phase that
requires your to confirm that no copyright is infringed.

I recommend you to load only strictly necessary materials. Photographs and any other type of
media necessary to build views or any other kind of contribution it is better if you use
dedicated services like flikr, youtube, google video, and slideshare. Do not clog the space
reserved with files that could be linked from external services.

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After loading the files you may organise them using folders following different criteria (Create
folder).
The existing files and those which are about to be loaded may be dragged and dropped onto their
corresponding folders.

Illustration 13: Drag and drop a file onto its corresponding folder

Another aspect worth taking into consideration is that a user's quota is limited to 50MB.

The last step for filling the profile is personal profile page building accessing Edit profile view.

Starting a blog

One of the motives for which we would take this step is to communicate the personal knowledge
adventure and discovery milestones. This is a very direct way to make this personal evolution known in
regard to a particular field of knowledge or it may reflect a general view over a certain matter.
Blogs have the function to balance personal experience with the collective one or just the personal view
upon a certain subject. Blog postings are in fact artefacts that could be incorporated into a view and
thus serve to enrich the collaborative environment.

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 Illustration 14: Add new blog

From the moment a blog was initiated like the one shown in illustration 14 a first posting should be
entered using Add post:

Starting with this moment on you may regard a blog as a personal reflective space. Also, all the
postings represent artefacts that may be taken and incorporated into a view if a certain purpose is met.

Illustration 15: New blog post

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Please, take into consideration a very important thing: for every blog and every posting you should add
tags in order to give more meaning for the indexing engine to your content building a personal
folksonomy. If you are clicking on Show my tags there will be shown a lot of tags that already had
been entered. You may choose from this collection those who put meaning and set a proper machine
friendly context.

Step 6 – Elaborate the generic presentation – profile view

In order to finish editing your personal profile or better said e-portfolio it is absolutely necessary to
Edit profile page. If you think why you hadn't done this already at a later stage when you have had
built the resumé is that because at this stage only we have enough artefacts to complete the e-portfolio.

Illustration 16: Edit profile view - build the first view

In fact, this section builds the first facet – view that we have talked already benefiting from some
particular blocks informational content that may be dragged and dropped from the blue zone into the
space below.

These blocks are small application that are used to extract particular information and add them to the
already built profile. Given their specialisation these blocks may be used to bring into the views
different media content like videos, images, feeds, etc.
All this added information via drag&drop and configured properly make what we understand as being
a view. On this phase you are building the main view associated to the completed profile but as you
will see many more views may be built each and every one aimed to serve different presentation
purposes. Following different blocks will be presented with their own characteristics and a few details
of their configuration.

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 Illustration 17: Building blocks of the view

Blocks to build associated views to the personal profile:

This block will bring content of one particular
blog that is selected. You may pick up a
different title for the blog or just leave it like it
is. Confirm the choice with Save.
Blog

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 This block allows you to put separate blog
postings belonging to one blog or many.

Blog post

This bloc allows inserting the newest posts

from a blog. What makes the difference from
the other two options is that it presents you
with three options (More options) that will
Recent blog help you to control how information is
posts conveyed to other's views when those are
allowed to copy content from yours:
Skip this block entirely when copying the
view, will take out blog postings at the
moment an user is copying the view.
Others may display your Blog in their view
does exactly what it says
Others will get their own copy of your Blog
does exactly what it says

This block allows you to include a news feed

in the view. Take into consideration option
Show feed items in full, as this allows the
articles taken from the feed to be included as
External feed full text as long as the provenance site is set to
offer them as such.

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 You may incorporate video sequences from
dedicated web services. Of course you may set
the width and height of the video frame to
adjust it to your content needs.
External
video

You may incorporate in a view files already

loaded in Files section.
You must be very careful because if you are
also an administrator or member to many
File(s) to other groups, you will have access to their
download files also and it is possible to put sensible files
that shouldn't be presented to those for whom
you build the view.
Be very careful in this matter!

Puts into the view a whole folder to be

accessed. The same advertisement is in force
concerning file content and who may see
them.
A folder

Displays an HTML file that is already loaded

into Files section. In this respect larger content
may be given but the only problem is that
images should be loaded from an external
Some HTML source. It doesn't take the images from the

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 same folder.
Inserts in the view an image that has been
already loaded in the Files. As it is seen in the
picture you have access to all the file images
from all the groups you are member (marked
An image in the image with different colours).
Please, take care to the restrictions and
sensible materials not to be mistakenly
inserted into the view.
Ticking Show description will also put the
description of the image that already exists.
You may insert a new Width to resize the
image. This is very useful when you have
large images that you would like to adjust to
your content needs. If a new value is not
given, the image stays at its original size.

With this block you may insert video sequences in flv (flash video) format or mp4. Please do not exceed 7MB in size.
The file should be first loaded in Files into a folder named for convenience media.

Embedded
media
This block allows putting text and image into
the view. In order to insert images and links
from external sites you may extend the editor
panel clicking on the small blue screen icon
Text box (see the image attached). The images needed
to be inserted should be first opened clicking
on them from the Files section and afterwards
clicking the image icon and inserting the link.
From the same panel you may control how the
image is shown (size and alignment). When
you have finished this step, just close the full
screen editing clicking on Close button of the
window.

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 This bloc takes already existing information
from Contact information section and shows
them in the view.

Contact
information

Inserts a dedicated space where all your friends show up.

My friends
Inserts the groups you belong to.

My groups
Inserts a list with the existing views in My portfolio – My views

My views
Inserts information about yourself from My profile section. You will be offered a set of options just as in the case of
Contact information regarding how artefacts will be shown.

Profile
information
Wall This block puts in a dynamic field that allows your friends to send you public or private messages.
This block allows your Curriculum Vitae to be put in the view

Your entire
resume
This block allows selection of certain parts of the artefacts that are part of the Curriculum Vitae.

One resume
field

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Step 7 - Personalised views

I have mentioned before that views may be built in order to be adapted to different contexts and
communicational and presentational needs. These views could be built from section My portfolio –
My views.

Anatomy of one view

We will start from an already built view that will serve as analysis model:

Illustration 18: Anatomy of a view

As I was saying, a view is an aggregation of many artefacts as it is seen from area 2 in the illustration
above.
What the fellow colleagues will see looks like a web page with information concerning professional
and personal details:

Illustration 19: View seen by the others

As it is seen in illustration 19, there are three interest areas concerning a view:
– Editing the details regarding the view (Edit view details)
– Editing view's content (Edit this view) and
– Setting who can get to this view (Edit View access)

At this moment an accent should be taken into editing the content of the view and also establishing the
access levels for the community members and friends.

Illustration 20: Edit individual blocks

Things look quite good in content editing and building the view as we based our efforts on the previous
steps. You should be focused on another important aspect concerning granularity of access. On short

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who is seeing what?

Illustration 21: Setting who gets access to what

We will review one by one following the areas marked on the illustration 21:

Area 1
Ticking Allow copying will allow all those accessing the view to be able to copy it. Be very, very
careful as all the files included in the view may could be copied also. Also pay attention to the
copyright issues for all the materials included in the view.

Area 2
This area allows three types of access to the view:
– public – could be seen from the outside,
– logged in users
– network friends

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All these access policies are backed up by a counter that has the role to set up the time for a view's
existence. Setting the start date but not mentioning the end date makes the view visible for an indefinite
period of time.

These settings could be tweaked in area 3. Also in this area the secret link is displayed (this link could
be sent to all those friends that are not members of the community and is a direct access to your
profile). Also in area 3 friends may be added to share a view with them.

Area 4
Here you may override the settings for all the views regardless of the settings previously done to
individual level of access.

Now, we have to stress the fact that the views may be built in three different context:
– build the main view, that attached to your profile and the most important one: Profile – Edit
profile page
– views built for different occasions or especially for particular groups My portfolio – My views
– views built for a group in order to promote and illustrate the activities.

Following a view build up you have the option to model the way this will be presented to the users
accessing Change my view layout option under the block selection blue area

Illustration 22: Change my View Layout

Clicking on this link you'll be lead to the first step when it comes to customise the looks of the view
meaning the number of columns and how content will be distributed across. Options start from a single
column up to five. Two or three are recommendable being the most efficient ones.

Illustration 23: Number of columns

Pushing forward (Next) you'll be presented options concerning space distribution among columns.

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For two columns option you have three layouting profiles:

Illustration 24: 2 column options

For three columns option you have three layouting profiles:

Illustration 25: 3 columns option

To four columns option you have three layouting profiles:

Illustration 26: 4 columns option

Before closing this step I have to say that from Settings section, Preferences you may set that at the
margins of the columns to appear some control buttons designed to help you erase and manage with
ease the columns. I do not recommend this option as it is very easy to erase a whole column of content.
This is not a tragedy as all the content we know are artefacts, but it is time factor waisted.

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Step 8 – Groups and forums
After building a solid profile, the following step would be joining work groups already established.
This may be achieved searching groups with Find groups where you may select All groups option and
click on the search icon. At this moment all the groups will be shown that are set with the attribute
Publicly Viewable Group. A few more details on how this works may be found on Step 3.

What is our main concern at this moment is how a group is initiated and managed.
The administrator initially sets how groups may be initiated and who has the authority to do that:
– only the administrators (users having administrator attribution)
– all community members.

Our community is set so that any member may initiate a group (details on how this may be achieved
you could find at Step 3).

Group anatomy

Illustration 27: Group sections

All the groups you are already a member appear on the right side of the site immediately the moment
you authenticate. Here also on a short notice it is specified to which you are administrator.

As illustration 22 shows, a group has many different sections.

About: introductory section meant to serve you generic information about the group like purpose,
scope, etc. Also there are informations concerning how many members are in the group and also who

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are de administrators. There is a short overview about how many views are built for this particular
group and how many folders and files are being contributed.

The Files and Views sections are already covered and we should take a look at the Forums as here is in
fact the kitchen of the group. This is the place where ideas are pushed around and debates are started
concerning different issues. Also the forums may be used to spread news and initiate different topics on
different thematics around a central subject may that be a project or a development direction.

How a forum is structured?

First we have to understand the basic structure: forum -» topics

So, a New forum has the role to start a new directory of topics that you may initiate (New topic).

For starters I recommend to think about the big debate subjects that will lead to a prolific debate on
different topics that make the big subject. All these subjects will constitute, in fact, the forums.

You have to take into consideration the fact that only the administrators of one group may initiate
forums. The administrators are mentioned as Group admins as seen in illustration 28. Also, admins

Illustration 28: Forum details

may edit the forums adding or modifying the general information for a specific forum or if necessity
demands it to delete them.
As you can see in the illustration you could assign moderators to a forum. They have extended rights
on topics.

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 Illustration 29: Topics structure

As you can see from illustration 29, inside forums there is a familiar structure for all of you so I
consider it is not necessary to get into details how to post a message or a reply.

Illustration 30: One of the topics

What should be added is that all the members of a certain group may subscribe to a topic and they will
be sent a notice when that particular topic has been changed or added replies.

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Step 9 - Settings and messages

We came to the end of this miniguide, but we shall not close it before telling you that there's a section
from where you could make some customisations regarding personal account and the way you
communicate with the other members.

Illustration 31: Setting preferences

As you may see from illustration 31, Friends control allows you to set how the other members could
add you as their friend:
– nobody may add me as a friend
– new friends require my authorisation
– new friends are automatically authorised

It is possible to set how you will receive the messages from the others. It is preferable to let all the
members send you messages.
Coming to messages, you should know that beside the fact you receive them on email, you could
access them from Notifications (Settings section) – a place like an internal mailbox of the system (see
illustration 32).

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 Illustration 32: Notifications

A very important aspect for correct identification of all members and for easy identification on which
efficient collaboration is based, and also strengthening institutional ties, would be the possibility of
expressing the affiliation to the institutions listed at Institution membership.

Illustration 33: Affiliation

These institutions will be entered by administrator on member's request if there are not listed already.
As you can see from illustration 33 a list presents all the institutions that already exist. Members may
choose for one and they will confirm affiliation clicking on Send request.

FOR THE QUICK JUMPERS

I have registered now what?

Go fill some details → → About me, Contact information, Messaging, General →
Profile icons (here put a picture and confirm ticking Default.

Where do I go to fill a profile?

→ → Fill my resume as this is the most
important section of them all.

How do I join a group?

→ → → → Choose the one you are interested in from
the list of public groups. Also if you are invited to a group that is not visible you will receive this

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invitation in a mail or to the Messages inside the system.

How do I check my messages?

→

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