Introducing Version 2.1 of CIRCA. A Guided Tour

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1 Introducing Version 2.1 of CIRCA A Guided Tour This guide is intended for those users already familiar with version 2.0 of CIRCA. In preparation of the migration to version 2.1 (expected beginning of May 99), this brochure describes the new functionalities, the main differences with version 2.0 as well as other useful tips. It will however not give details of all the functionalities available in CIRCA. Instead, a reference manual will be accessible via the online help or an electronic version can be provided. What is CIRCA CIRCA is an extranet tool, developed under the European Commission IDA programme, and tuned towards public administrations needs. It enables a given community of interest (committee, working groups, ), geographically spread across Europe (and beyond) to access a private space on the internet where they can share information, documents, participate in discussion fora This private space is called an Interest Group. The access and navigation in this virtual space is done via any Internet browser (Netscape, Internet explorer ), assuming you have been given a User-id and Password to enter your Interest Group. Like in any working group, committee or project team, one member plays the role of chairman or moderator, in CIRCA we call it a Leader. Consult the Quick Guide to CIRCA and CIRCA User Manual for more detailed information. CIRCA 2.1: A Major Step Forward Version 2.1 of CIRCA brings major enhancements in the functionalities of the tool, amongst others are: - A more intuitive User Interface with improved online help, personalised to your own needs - A Library with enhanced Document Management features such as multilingual support and version control - A Meeting section allowing for online meeting registration and a virtual meetings - A Newsgroup area accessible via your normal browser - Enhanced Security features with the support of SSL and Certificates - A simplification of the Directory and Contact Services handling - Additional features that ease further the Administration and control of your Interest Group (for Leaders only) Accessing CIRCA and Setting Your Preferences Except for secure Interest Groups for which a certificate is required (contact your Leader to know how to obtain it), access to CIRCA remains unchanged: A login name and password brings you to the home page of CIRCA. From there you can select the Interest Group you want to access but also edit your Personal Information i.e. your preferred language for the CIRCA interface (English, French or German), how documents shall be presented in the Library, your personal data, Logica SA/NV IDA DOCEX Framework Contract CIRCA Support Sub-project Page 1 of 5

2 An New and Intuitive Interface Selecting the Interest Group of your choice, you discover CIRCA s new interface. The main services remain accessible from the top of every page (Information, Library, Directory, Meeting, Newsgroup, Mail, Search, Help) but in a more iconographic way, with small text box popping up when you roll over an icon. Moreover the texts of the interface appear in the preferred language you have selected. All other buttons such as Home, Mail to Helpesk and Edit Preferences are now grouped in the bottom right of every page. As in the previous version, clicking on a particular service will give access to additional functionalities that appear as extra icons at the top of the page (and not on the left of the page anymore). Figure 1: The New CIRCA Interface Library: Multilingual and version control When uploading a document you can now choose whether it is a multilingual document i.e. it exists in more than one of the three supported languages (EN, FR, DE). Thus only one entry in the library is necessary to access all its linguistic versions. Clicking on the Version Control button of a document s Information Page, one can easily upload other linguistic versions of that particular document. Moreover, a version control mechanism has been implemented with a check in and check out feature that allows to lock a document, update it and re-upload it as a new version. Authorised users can also access to previous versions of a document and even revert a current document to a previous version. Navigation through the library is also made easier as new windows will pop up to provide additional information and guidance. An Interest Group Leader can decide to add or remove some of the attributes associated with a document (i.e. those listed in the document Information Page), thus tuning it to your group specific needs. Bulk upload i.e. the upload of several documents at once, has become much more user friendly. Logica SA/NV IDA DOCEX Framework Contract CIRCA Support Sub-project Page 2 of 5

3 Figure 2: The Library Service Directory and Contacts Services The Directory and Contacts Services of CIRCA 2.0 have been merged into one single Directory service, thus simplifying the handling of user data Users can now modify all their personal data, including their name and first name The CIRCA server installed in the Data Centre of the Commission (forum.europa.eu.int) contains user information of all Commission staff, regularly updated. Thus CIRCA Users from within the Commission can keep their CUD (formerly called CAA) login and password to access CIRCA. Meeting space The Meeting space has been considerably enriched, including calendaring and virtual meeting: Figure 3: The Meeting Service Logica SA/NV IDA DOCEX Framework Contract CIRCA Support Sub-project Page 3 of 5

4 Meetings The Meetings service was substantially improved to become a truly interactive meeting scheduling service. It offers an easy interface to create a meeting, select the participants that will be automatically notified via . The invitees can easily confirm or decline their participation. Any modification to a particular meeting is automatically notified to the list of participants. Calendar A calendar service provides an easy overview of the upcoming meetings, a simple click gives all information on a particular meeting. Virtual Meeting A virtual meeting facility (i.e. a chat restricted to IG members) is now available via the Virtual Meetings icon on the top bar. The Leader has the responsibility to create a particular virtual meeting, set the time slot for the meeting and invite participants or restrict access. The Virtual meeting window is composed of three frames: The first will contain the list of invited members that become highlighted whenever they enter the virtual meeting. The second frame contains actually the messages exchanged between participants. The third frame allows to type in your own message and send it to the Virtual Meeting. Figure 4 : The Virtual Meeting Interface Newsgroups via Your Regular Browser You might have experienced problems in accessing the News service or sending contributions in the previous version of CIRCA. This was mainly due to local restrictions (i.e. from your informatics department) in authorising you access to News servers and sometimes your browser was not properly configured. With version 2.1, Users have the choice (via the Edit Preferences service) to access the News section via their News interface (as before) or via their normal web browser (Netscape, Internet Explorer). Logica SA/NV IDA DOCEX Framework Contract CIRCA Support Sub-project Page 4 of 5

5 Figure 5: Accessing News via Your Browser CIRCA Security Features The new version allows to operate an Interest Group via simple login/password or to encrypt data via SSL or to use Certificates. The choice of using Certificates has to be made at CIRCA logical instance level i.e. all Interest group implemented within this logical instance of CIRCA have to use Certificates. The next version of CIRCA (2.2) will allow this selection to be made at Interest Group level. CIRCA Administration (for Leaders only) A number of new features were added to facilitate the administration of the Interest Group: Simpler view of all permission overwrite that are active in an Interest Group Interest Group home page can be replaced with any HTML page that better fits your needs Information Service entry page can be replaced with any HTML page that better fits your needs For CIRCA administrator, instant view of the membership of a given user i.e. which Interest Group and with which access rights. And More From CIRCA one can interface to external databases, provided they are web-enabled. The overall access performance was improved through optimised caching feature. Transfer of access rights: A CIRCA user can grant its access rights to another user for a given period. Information service becomes multilingual i.e. authorised users can upload HTML pages in several languages. Search can be done across all Interest Groups of which a user is a member of. Logica SA/NV IDA DOCEX Framework Contract CIRCA Support Sub-project Page 5 of 5