Your desktop may have additional items on it, and they will be explained to you during initial training. It's all pretty straightforward.

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1 VTH FirstClass Desktop The First Class Desktop is where everything begins for your Virtual Town Hall. The FC Desktop displays your mailbox, file folders, and calendars, which contain all the information you need to maintain your Web site. And depending on how your user group or personal preferences were set up it could look like any of following. Your desktop may have additional items on it, and they will be explained to you during initial training. It's all pretty straightforward. If you have further questions, contact our customer support line at (978) , or send an to and we will be happy to assist you.

2 Mailbox The Mailbox is the core of the Virtual Town Hall service. First Class is, among other things, an application -- much like Outlook, Eudora, etc. Your mailbox is where you send public notices and post meeting minutes and agendas, even when you start out in the Posting Stationery folder. Comments sent from your Web site by a visitor may also appear in your mailbox if you have been set up to receive them. If you are not using FirstClass as your primary mailbox you may want to enter a forwarding address to your regular account. See "Preferences". Posting Stationery You may have a folder for special, pre-addressed stationery icons in your desktop to make it easier for frequent postings. Posting stationery is simply a pre-addressed, partially completed message. For minutes and agendas we will typically pre-fill the subject with your standard naming convention for that particular board. You will only need to change the date of the meeting in the subject. We strongly recommend using the numeric date, mm/dd/yyyy, since it will make sorting and organization of your minutes and agendas much easier.

3 The Menu Bar vs. Icon Shortcuts There are two ways of performing operations within the Virtual Town The first is to use the menu commands at the top of each window. From your desktop the menu choices are as follows: File - Edit - Format - Message - Collaborate - View - Help. The second way is to use the icons below the menu. The icons are designed to be easy to use. In addition, if you hold the mouse arrow over any icon you will display the function of that icon at the bottom of the window and, with Windows, as a pop-up near the icon. To make life easier, you can customize your tool bar by selecting: View - Toolbar - Customize Toolbars. You can drag and drop icons from the category windows to your toolbar and place them wherever you wish. You can also delete unneeded icons by dragging them off the toolbar and dropping them into the category window. Splitting Folder Views You also have the capability of splitting the view of any folder on your desktop. By selecting View from the menu bar, and then select Split - you can either split the screen vertically or horizontally (the example is split vertically). This allows for you to view your folders AND your documents or messages at the same time. Splitting a folder containing minutes or agendas makes it easier to archive your posted files into sub-folders when you change from year to year. By choosing File - New - New Folder you can create archives for past

4 year's contents, then select and either "drag and drop" them into the appropriate sub-folder, or with the right mouse button choose Move to Folder and select the appropriate sub-folder to move the items all at once. Address Book/Contacts Folder If you are using VTH for your services this is where you can save the contact information and address of people you frequently communicate with. VTH Help The Help folder is a collection of VTH First Class documents that provide highly detailed examples and explanations. To read the help documentation, simply open the folder and click on a topic. Note that the folders at the top are help documentation that was written by Centrinity (the makers of First Class ), and comes with the server. This will help you if you are using VTH for your services. The topics below that were created by Virtual Town Hall. VTH FAQs & News The VTH FAQs & News is a folder that we use to communicate with our users en masse, notifying you of new features, upcoming events, and (hopefully) providing answers to some of the more common questions we receive. Folders and Conferences Folders and Conferences are technically very different things, but we usually use the term "Folders" to keep things simple. As the term implies, First Class folders are much like file folders, where you store documents and other sub-folders. They are, in fact, almost identical to the folders your computer uses to organize information. Technically, every container you see within your Digital File Cabinet is a conference, even though we often refer to them as folders. Conferences contain permissions to restrict which users will have the ability to access or update the files within them. You can also create mail rules for conferences that allow you to affect the way the conference and items within the conference act. You can only create sub-folders within any of the existing Folders and Conferences in your Digital File Cabinet. With very few exceptions we must

5 create any conferences in the first level of the Digital File Cabinet so we can assign the appropriate permissions. Just in case you're curious, the main difference between conferences and folders is that you can actually send directly to a conference, but not to a folder. Creating a new folder Creating a new folder allows you to save messages and documents in areas other than your mailbox, or if you are within your web Digital File Cabinet, to create sub-folders to contain collections of web pages that are similar in nature. For users you may want to separate them by sender, by project, or any other means that is logical to you. You can change the name of the folder by going to the File menu and selecting Properties, or by right clicking on the title to either rename it, or choose Properties to also change the subject at the same time. To file any message into the new folder, simply highlight the message, click and hold the left mouse button, drag and drop it into the new folder.

6 Calendars Calendars are, well... calendars. They are used to post events, meetings and agendas, or simply keep track of what you're doing next week. Calendars have four primary views: daily, weekly, monthly, and list. The monthly view is shown below:

7 Global/Group Calendars: Group calendars come in handy when you want to be able to look at one calendar to see a variety of calendar events that may or may not apply to the same type of meeting or people. For instance, we often recommend a Group Calendar for the actual meeting room so your staff can easily see when time is available within the room to schedule their meeting. You may want additional group calendars for any town facility that is available for reservation. To Create New Group Calendar: File - New - New Group Calendar - Standard Group Calendar File - Properties to give it a logical name Collaborate - Permissions: Uncheck "Do not publish in directory" Belongs to e.g. CityST Staff Cals group Subscribers: Add Subscribers: Choose name to put a copy on their desktop. Giving Permissions Who: Enter the person you subscribed Key Permissions Ability to delete any item you created Ability to create items Ability to edit items you created Ability to edit items Ability to delete items they created View unrestricted details Search the calendar Add Participants Open items Download attachments View history Open calendar.