ChatBlazer 8 Site Administrator Usage Guide Using the Site Adminstrator Other than the modification of ChatBlazer 8 s client configuration to affect the Flash chat client s runtime behavior, the Site Administrator is used to manage the live components that make your chat service, e.g. users, rooms, profanity control. The various sections below will provide you with instructions on how to manage these aspects of your chat service. Rooms / Room Manager The Rooms panel (or the Room Manager) is used to manage all the chat groups and rooms found in a chat site. You can use this to create groups, rooms, and to delete and modify them. The panel offers a tree view for you to see the groups and rooms in your site. Groups and rooms are arranged in a hierarchical order and you can order the rooms. ChatBlazer 8 Site Administrator 1
Figure 1. When a site is first created, it does not have any rooms. Click on Create Room to create your first room. To create a room for a site, follow the steps below: 1. Select the Rooms node under the site node in the main control panel. 2. In the Rooms panel on the right panel, select the site ID and rightclick. 3. Select Create from the popup menu and a Create Room/Group dialog will appear. 4. Enter the room/group name, select the appropriate type and click the Create button. If the room is successfully created, it will show up in the room list. The Rooms panel only shows the rooms for the site that was selected. It does not show all the rooms in all your chat sites. ChatBlazer 8 Site Administrator 2
Figure 1. Create Room/ Group popup menu Figure 1. Create Room/ Group dialog ChatBlazer 8 Site Administrator 3
Figure 1. Room shows up after being created In Figure 10, the number in square brackets, [1010], is the room s ID. The number in round brackets (0) indicates how many users there are in the room. The room tree view shows all the rooms found in the chat site, even private rooms. The other functions found in the right-click popup menu are described below. Function Rename Delete Purge Move Up Move Down Close Open Description Type in the new name and press Enter to rename the room or group. Removes a room /group from the chat site. The room must first be empty of users. This change is permanent and will be saved by the ChatBlazer server. All rooms under the group will also be deleted. Kicks all users from the room. All users in the room will be logged out. However, any administrator in the room will not be removed. Moves a room/group up the hierarchy under its parent group. Moves a room/group down the hierarchy under its parent group. Closes a room to prevent any user from entering the room. Current users in the room are unaffected. But if they change room, they cannot return to the room if it remains closed. Opens a room that has been closed. ChatBlazer 8 Site Administrator 4
Monitor Room Send Message Clear Uploaded Files Clear Media Library Files Joins the room silently so that you can see all messages being sent. Normal users in the room are unaware of your presence in the room. Sends a message to the room. If you have selected a room group, the message will be sent to all rooms and groups under it. Removes all files uploaded by users into this room Removes all media items in the room s Media Library Group Settings The Group Access Permission panel is used to modify access settings specific to a room group. Remember to click Apply to save your changes. The list of changes you can make is given below. Function Description Allow Access to GuestsCheck this if you want the rooms in this group to be accessible to all guests and members. Allow Access to All Members Check this if you want the rooms in this group to be accessible to all members but not guests. This will include members who do not have permission to access this room, as specified by the User Manager. Allow Access to Determines if spectators can login to the rooms in this group. Spectators Allow Access to Parent Check this if you want the rooms in this group to be accessible to User Groups all members in its parent user groups. Figure 1. Group Access Permission Panel ChatBlazer 8 Site Administrator 5
Room General Settings The Room General Settings panel is used to modify settings specific to a room. Remember to click Apply to save your changes. The list of changes you can make is given below. Function Description Override Group s Check this if you want this room to override its parent group Access settings access settings. Allow Access to GuestsCheck this if you want this room to be accessible to all guests and members. Allow Access to All Members Allow Access to Spectators Public/Private Check this if you want this room to be accessible to all members but not guests. This will include members who do not have permission to access this room, as specified by the User Manager. Determines if spectators can login to this room. Determines the room type. If the room is a private room, it will not appear in the room list of a client. Toggle Profanity Check This setting gives you finer control over profanity filtering in your chat site. You can take this setting to mean the opposite of the setting Enable profanity detection in the Profanity Manager. If you have enabled profanity detection, checking this will turn off profanity detection for this room. Conversely, checking this when profanity detection is not enabled will activate it for this room. Allow private chat Monitors join room silently Enable whiteboard User Limit Message History Password Logout URL Allows your users to initiate private chat conversations between each other If enabled, normal users will not be notified when monitors joining this room. This allows your monitors to monitor the room in stealth mode. Turns on or off the Whiteboarding feature for this room Maximum number of users that can be in the room at any one time. A 0 indicates that no limit is imposed. Determines the number of lines of history messages to display when a user logs into the room. Password that guests have to use to enter this room. Members do not need this password as they are assigned rooms which they can access. URL that a user will be redirected to upon logging out of this room. This is useful when you want different logout pages for different interest groups in your chat site. ChatBlazer 8 Site Administrator 6
Welcome Message Message that will be displayed whenever a user logs into a room. Figure 1. Room general settings Media Settings This panel determines the multimedia settings for the room. Function Enable File Library Enable AV Library Description Turns on / off the File Library feature for this room Turns on / off the AV Library feature for this room (available only for Media AV plug-in) Besides turning either library on or off, you can configure the permissions required for a user to be able to upload a file or add a media clip to the library. If the library is turned on but all the permissions are unchecked, it means only the Chat Administrator or Site Administrator can upload files. ChatBlazer 8 Site Administrator 7
Figure 1. Media settings. In this example, both libraries are turned on. For the File Library, guests are not allowed to upload files. For the AV Library, monitors, moderators and speakers cannot upload or add AV clips. Room Slideshow Settings The Room Slideshow Settings panel is used to create and modify banner slideshows specific to a room. You can add multiple banner slides to a room. Remember to click Apply to save your changes. The list of changes you can make is given below. Function Enable banner slideshow Description Check this to enable a banner slideshow to be shown within this room. Delay to showing First Slide Delay in seconds to show the first slide after logging into the room. Duration Image URL Target Duration in seconds that the slide will remain before changing to the next slide. The image filename of the banner. The URL to open when the person clicks on the banner. ChatBlazer 8 Site Administrator 8
Open in this window The window at which the target URL will be opened. URL will be opened with a _blank target window if not specified. Figure 1. Room Slideshow Settings Panel Room Open Schedule Settings The Room Open Schedule Settings panel is used to create and modify schedules to open a room. You can add multiple schedules to a room. Remember to click Apply to save your changes. The list of changes you can make is given below. Function Activate Schedule Purge users when closing the room Day of Week Start Time End Time Description Activates room scheduling based on the time entry list given. If checked, users will automatically be logged out when the room is scheduled to close. Otherwise, users in the room can continue until they logout on their own accord. Select the day of the week to open the room. Time to open the room based on 24hr representation. E.g. To open a room at 10.00 P.M, you should put 2200. Time to close the room based on 24hr representation. ChatBlazer 8 Site Administrator 9
Figure 1. Room Open Schedule Panel Moderator Settings A room can be configured as a moderated room. In a moderated room, messages from users do not go straight back to the room. It goes to a moderator that is hosting the room and optionally to a speaker. Messages are then replied to and sent back to the room from the moderator or the speaker. Function Set as Moderated Room Pass remaining messages when leaving Allow whispering among Users Allow users to send Audio/Emoticon Users cannot talk unless allowed Description Check this if you want the room to be a moderated room. Determines if moderators pass any remaining messages when they stop moderating or logout. This setting permits or disallows normal users from whispering to each other when there is a moderator in the room. This is useful when you want to forbid private communication between your users during a moderated session. Permits audio or emoticon messages to be sent in a moderated room. Such messages are not moderated and are sent straight to the chat room. Determines if users entering a room can talk. If not, their text input boxes are disabled. ChatBlazer 8 Site Administrator 10
Queue Messages Send reply to source only Message Pass Ratio This setting affects where messages are directed when there are no moderators in the session. If checked, messages are buffered on the server and will be sent to the next incoming moderator. Messages are not sent to the room or to speakers directly, as is the behavior when this is not checked. If enabled, every speaker s reply is sent only to the originator of the message / question. Used to determine the number of passes a message requires before being shown in the room or sent to the speaker. For example, if the pass ratio is 1, and the room has 3 moderators, only one moderator needs to pass the message for it to be shown. You can use percentage as well. For a pass ratio of 66%, again with 3 moderators, two are now required to pass the message for it to be shown. Use 0 to indicate that all moderators have to pass a message. Limit Messages to Retrieve In a moderated event with many users, thus many messages, it is useful to limit the number of messages that a moderator may see at any one time, so that the moderator is not overwhelmed by the number of messages. Figure 1. Room Moderator settings If you have purchased the Media AV plug-in, the following set of options is available to you. Remember to click Apply to save your changes. ChatBlazer 8 Site Administrator 11
Figure 1. Room Audio/Video settings Function Enable Audio/Video AV Type Audio Only Only users with webcam can enter Description Check this if you want the room to be an Audio/Video room. In an A/V room, users can initiate A/V sessions with each other. Determines the type of AV room. For One-to-One, only private AV sessions are allowed. For multi-party A/V conferencing, choose Many-to-Many. The Speaker Broadcast mode is active only if the room is moderated. When this is chosen, only users who are of Speaker type can stream out, i.e. broadcast. Other users can only receive the broadcasted AV stream. Check this if you do not wish to enable video streaming in this room. Check this if you wish to allow only users with A/V capabilities (usually an installed webcam) to enter the room. Users without webcam Check this if you do not wish to allow users without webcam to cannot join broadcast view others broadcast streams. Such users can still enter the room. Auto-Start Max. Views Per User Automatically start receiving audio-video streams when joining the room. This setting is used only in a Many-to-Many AV room. This determines the number of AV views (video clips) that a single user can view at any time. ChatBlazer 8 Site Administrator 12
Users / User Manager The User Manager allows you to manage the pool of registered members of a chat site. Similar to the Room Manager, the User Manager shows the users for only the chat site that was selected in the Site Manager. You can assign users to specified user groups in this panel. Figure 1. User Manager window shows members and their assigned groups and roles for a chat site Creating Users To create a new user, click on the Create User button at the bottom of the window. Follow the dialog that opens: 1. Profile Enter the user name and password. If you want the user to be able to access all your rooms, check the Can access all rooms box. 2. User Groups Assign this user to any user groups that you have. You will learn more about User Groups in the following Users Group section. ChatBlazer 8 Site Administrator 13
3. Roles Assign roles to this user based on the rooms that you have. If you check Monitor on the site s row (e.g. CBS2), this means the user is a monitor for all the room in the site. If you select a room group, e.g. Staff Rooms, the user will be a monitor for all rooms under that group. Please note that the Moderator and Speaker roles are mutually exclusive, a user can only be either or none, but not both. ChatBlazer 8 Site Administrator 14
Figure 1. Dialog for creating a user ChatBlazer 8 Site Administrator 15
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If you have the Chat Hosting module, you can assign your members as site administrators. Once a user has been created, you can assign the user to other user groups available. To do that, follow the steps below. 1. Click on the user s name and right-click. A popup menu will appear. If you have not retrieved any user from the database, you will have to click on the Retrieve button. 2. Select Assign Groups. A separate popup menu showing the list of user groups will appear. 3. Select the group that you wish to assign this user to and click Add. Click on Save to save the newly assigned users. ChatBlazer 8 Site Administrator 17
Figure 1. Dialog shows list of user groups that you can assign a user to. Remember to always click on Save after you have finished making changes in order to update the ChatBlazer server. Using the Filter The filter allows you to retrieve user records based on names, roles and the user groups they belong to. Name searches are case-sensitive. Names can contain two basic wildcards, * and?, e.g. sam* will retrieve names like sam and samuel. You can send more than one name pattern, each separated by a space or a comma. For the role-based filter, checking on multiple boxes means that a user only needs to fulfill one of the roles being filtered. If you specify both a name pattern and a role, a qualified user will need to satisfy both criteria. For example, sam* and checking Monitor means only user names of the pattern sam and assigned a Monitor role will be retrieved. ChatBlazer 8 Site Administrator 18
Figure 1. User Manager in View by Rooms mode window shows members who have access to the selected room. Notice that you cannot add or edit a member info in this mode. Managing User Groups The User Groups Manager allows you to create and manage user groups for the pool of registered members of a chat site. The User Groups Manager shows the user groups for only the chat site that was selected in the Site Manager. You can assign user groups to specified room groups in this panel. Creating User Groups To create a new user group, follow the steps below. 1. Click on Create. A dialog window will appear. 2. Enter the name of your group. Group names must be unique for the chat site. 3. Click OK. When you ve done that, you should see the new group name appear in the list of groups. To delete a group, select a user group from the list and click on Delete. Be careful when doing this, as all users belonging to the group will be disassociated. The affected users are not deleted from the database. To rename a group, click on the Rename button and use the dialog window that appears. ChatBlazer 8 Site Administrator 19
Figure 1. User Groups Manager Figure 1. Dialog for creating a user group When you have created a user group, you can assign it access to certain rooms or room groups that you want. For example, you only want members ChatBlazer 8 Site Administrator 20
in the Premium Members group to access the Premium Members Only room. 1. Select the user group you want to assign access to. 2. In the Grant Access to Room / Group panel, click on any of the room group that you want to be assigned. 3. Click on Apply when you are done. Access permissions granted to a room group is automatically given to all child room groups. Look at the figure below for an example. Figure 1. Use the lower right panel to assign rooms or room groups to the selected user group in the list. Here, the selected user group Staff has access to the room group Staff Rooms as well as the room Customer Support. Selecting a room group (e.g. Staff Rooms ) implies that all child rooms and room groups are also given access. Managing Broadcasts The Broadcast Manager provides a convenient way to send messages to your users at specific times. You can specify the year, month up to the exact minute of when the message is to be broadcasted. This differs from the banner slideshow that you can configure in the Room Settings window. To formulate a broadcast message, perform the following steps. ChatBlazer 8 Site Administrator 21
1. Give the message a unique identifier by keying it in the Message ID text field. This identifier must not already exist in the list of message IDs on the left side of the window. 2. Select the groups and/or rooms that the message should be broadcasted to. If you select a group, all sub-groups and rooms under the group will automatically receive the broadcast. Hold down the Control key to deselect an item. 3. Input the time interval. The format of a time interval is given below. Time Interval ::= < minute list * > < hour list * > < day list * > < date list * > < month list * > < year list * > minute list ::= < minute > < minute >, <minute list > hour list ::= < hour > < hour >, < hour list > day list ::= < day > < day >, < day list > date list ::= < date > < date >, < date list > month list ::= < month > < month >, < month list > year list ::= < year > < year >, < year list > For day, 0 means Sunday, 1 Monday, and so on to 6 for Saturday. A time interval has 6 time units as stated above, each unit can either be a list of valid numbers or an asterisk, to indicate all. For example, a time interval * * * * * *, means that the message is broadcasted every minute. 0 16 * 1 8 2002 will broadcast a message at 4pm on August 1, 2002. 15,45 * 1,5 * * * will broadcast a message at the 15 th and 45 th minute of every hour on Monday and Friday. 4. Indicate the title of the broadcast message in the Title text field. 5. Include an image to be displayed with the message. This image should not be an absolute URL (e.g. http://mydomain.com/image.gif) but it is relative to the site s directory on your web site, e.g. http:// mydomain.com/chat/cbs1/. You should only need to specify the filename itself. This entry is optional. 6. Enter your message to be broadcasted. This message can be omitted provided you have specified an image in step 5. 7. Click on Add to effect the change. 8. Click on Save to send the list of messages you have created to the server to be stored permanently. If you only click Add without clicking Save, the messages are not actually stored on the server. When you make any changes to an existing message, remember to click Apply to effect the update before you select another message from the message list. ChatBlazer 8 Site Administrator 22
Figure 1. Broadcasts panel lets you create site-wide or room-based broadcast messages. Site Hosting Configuration If you have purchased the Chat Hosting module for ChatBlazer, you get increased customizability for each of your chat site. You can assign each chat site certain administrative functions or even disable them. These administrative settings affect the Site Administrator client module. Configure Chat System Settings ChatBlazer 8 Site Administrator 23
The Global Settings node in the main control interface controls the profanity and general settings for your chat network. These settings are not in the Site Manager as they affect the chat network as a whole. General Settings The General window allows you to configure settings that will affect your whole chat network. All the chat sites will adopt the settings you define here. To effect the changes you have made, click on Save. With the Chat Hosting module, these settings only affect those sites without the appropriate permissions. With the required permission, the Site Administrator can define settings that are localized to the chat site, and thus override the settings defined by the CA. Figure 1. General Settings panel in Configuration window ChatBlazer 8 Site Administrator 24
The list of settings that you can define here is listed below. Setting Administrator Accounts Description Create username and password for administrators to login. ChatBlazer 8 Site Administrator 25
External Data Source Specify a URL that the server will call to pull your user data. See below for more details. Reserved Names Specify a list of names that users cannot use to as their login name. User-created rooms are permanent If enabled, rooms created by member users will not be deleted when their creators log off. The rooms are saved in the system. Delete files uploaded If enabled, files that are uploaded by guests during their by guests upon logout sessions will be automatically removed when they logout. Files uploaded by members will always have to be removed manually. Enable audio effects in Even though the Audio Effects feature can be disabled using the room client configuration, the feature can still be used by other means. This effectively disables the feature regardless of whatever the user tries. Enabled audio effects Same as above but applicable for private chat sessions in private chat Max. Rooms Created Maximum number of rooms that a normal user can create from Per User within the chat client Max. Length of Guest Maximum characters allowed for a guest s login name Name Min. Vote(s) to Kick This sets the number of votes a user must receive in order to be User kicked out of the room as part of the Vote-to-Kick feature. Chat Usage Timer Feature Enable Chat Usage Timer This turns on or off the Chat Usage Timer feature. This feature effectively makes your chat system a time-based, pay-per-use chat system. Time Limit For Guests Time limit guests are given when in seconds. In Figure 25, you can see that guests are given 15 minutes of chat usage time. Time Limit For Members Time limit members are given in seconds. Leaving this blank means members are given unlimited time. For members, their remaining time usage is tracked in the database. External User Data Source This feature of ChatBlazer 8 you to integrate your existing user database (source) with ChatBlazer without the need to import your existing users. This is different from the SQL Database Connectivity approach (refer Advanced Usage section), especially if your database is on another remote host or you would prefer not to modify your existing user data schema. The URL is the script that the server will call when it needs to authenticate a user login. By making a HTTP POST, the server expects the script to return a ChatBlazer 8 Site Administrator 26
valid user record. If no data is received, it is assumed that the user login cannot be authenticated. By making no assumption on the script that is to be called, this gives you the flexibility of creating the required script based on whatever existing technologies that your portal or website is using, e.g. PHP, JSP, ASP.NET. Data fields submitted by server in the HTTP POST: username password other fields as given by client Data fields expected by server in the result: username password profile fields of the user (e.g. email, date of birth, country, etc.) If the result is empty or invalid, the user authentication is assumed to have failed. IP Exclusion Figure 1. IP Exclusion panel ChatBlazer 8 Site Administrator 27
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Users with their IP addresses found in this list will not be allowed to connect to your chat sites. Each entry can be either a single IP address or a range of IP addresses. For example, a single IP address can be 169.192.1.1, while a range of IP addresses can be 169.30-40.*.*. Profanity Manager The Profanity Manager sets the profanity detection environment for your chat network. Profanity detection uses powerful word-matching achieved by utilizing Unix-style regular expressions. Figure 1. Control profanity settings with the Profanity Manager ChatBlazer 8 Site Administrator 29
For chat hosting, if a site s profanity permission is disabled, it will adopt the settings set here by the CA. The functions you can perform here are listed below. Function Add Delete Description Add a profanity expression to the list. You can only add a single expression at any one time. Entries can be a single word or a Unix-style regular expression. Delete one or more entries in the list. Profanity Expression A profanity expression can be a simple word, a phrase or a regular expression. To specify a regular expression, the value must be prefixed with a /, e.g. /foobar Some common expressions that you can use are listed below. foo Look for foo anywhere in a message. /^foo Look for foo at the beginning of a line. /foo$ Look for foo at the end of a line. /\bfoo\b Look for foo with space or nothing on both sides. /foo\b foo at end of a word. /\bfoo foo at start of a word. The topic of regular expression is too lengthy to cover in this documentation. A search on the Internet will bring up several useful tutorials covering basic usage of regular expressions. The list of settings you can make is shown below. Setting Enable Profanity Detection Check login name for profanity Filter messages with profanity Description Toggles profanity detection for all rooms. Apply profanity detection to users trying to login. Users attempting to login with names that violate your profanity list will not be allowed entry. Toggles profanity filtering. If this is activated, messages with profanity in them will not be displayed to other users in the room. The offence is still counted against the culprit. ChatBlazer 8 Site Administrator 30
Kick user when profanity limit is exceeded Substitute Profanity with Toggles automatic kicking of abusive users who persist on using profanities. Indicate the number of times the user can commit the offence before being kicked out in the Profanity Limit box. This value is used to substitute every character of an offending word. E.g. the offending word is foo. A substitute string of ^^ will mean foo is replaced by ^^^^^^. To effect the changes you have made, click on Save. Widgets The Widgets feature is a major enhancement of ChatBlazer 8.5. With Widgets, you can now add your own functionality and interactive userinterfaces into the ChatBlazer client itself. The possibilities of widgets are only limited by your imagination! Figure 1. Manage your site s widgets In the Administrator client, the Widgets manager is only meant for you to specify widgets that require data to be saved. Otherwise, a widget that only has short-lived (session) based data and does not require any data to be saved does not have to be specified here. ChatBlazer 8 Site Administrator 31
The button Create Widget does not actually mean that a widget is created, rather a widget record will be created in the database which allows the widget to be able to save data. Detailed information from instructions on how to create a widget to installing your widget and presenting it to your users are out of the scope of this user guide. The information will be available in a separate manual. ChatBlazer 8 Site Administrator 32
setting up the chat client 33