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Group Features

Types of Group

Discussion Groups

All members of a Discussion Group can make up to 20 posts each in any 48 hour period. This stops individuals from dominating the conversation. You can set a posting limit that is smaller than 20, if you wish. The maximum number of members in a Discussion Group is not affected by the delivery settings of the members.

Announcement Groups

An Announcement Group can have up to 5 posting members. Each posting member can make up to 5 posts in any 10 day period. If others attempt to post or reply, they receive a message letting them know that they can not post to the group. Announcement groups have a custom message footer and home page.

Standard Group Features

Email Groups

Email groups are the primary application that is implemented in the OnlineGroups.Net framework. Our design goal is email groups that work exceptionally well using both email and the web.

Email Groups enable people to use ordinary email for group collaboration. All emails generated by the group are stored in a central location so that no individual has to organise or even keep the emails. People can participate in group conversations using only email, if they wish emails can simply be deleted, because each email clearly signals "who is doing what" without even being opened.

Configurable Group Visibility

An online group (and its Charter page) can be made visible to:

  • group members only
  • group members and logged-in site members only
  • everyone

Messages Area

All posts that are made using a OnlineGroups.Net group are stored in an online Messages Area.

  • "Topic" view The default view in the Messages area shows all posts with the same subject line in a single page; this makes it easy to follow an entire conversation topic, reading each post in chronological order; when posting gets busy, this means that a group can have multiple concurrent conversation topics that are easy to follow. The Topic view shows a photo of the person who made each post, if they have uploaded one.
  • Posts view OnlineGroups.Net also shows individual posts in date order; each post has a link to the Conversation that it is part of.
  • HTML email Encoding is removed from HTML email so that it renders as plain text.
  • Post-folding The "Topic" view automatically trims excessive bottom quoting and provides an option to display the entire post; this feature is based on a number of heuristics, so it can detect quoting with minimal false positivies, even if a standard convention is not used.
  • clickable urls Urls and strings beginning with "www." are rendered as clickable links.
  • masked email addresses Email addresses in the text of posts are diguised using "address (at) domain" format to reduce detection by spambots.
  • alternate post-shading The Topic view shows alternate posts shaded to differentiate them clearly.
  • own post-highlighing The Topic view highlights a logged-in participant's own posts to differentiate them clearly.
  • RSS option The list of current topics from each group is available via RSS.

Message Processing

OnlineGroups.Net has a variety of features that enable reliable message and configurable processing.

  • OnlineGroups.Net does not support file attachments on standard sites (please let us know if you would like to send file attachments)
  • Configurable Subject Line Tag Each OnlineGroups.Net group has a configurable subject line prefix (tag).
  • Configurable Headers and Footers Each OnlineGroups.Net group can either use a site-wide footer or have its own footer; footers can include plain text and dynamically generated links to:
    • the home page of the group
    • the profile page of the person who made the post
    • the "topic" in the messages area that the post is a part of
  • configurable reply-to - each group can be configured to address the "reply-to" field to either the sender or the group
  • attachment-handling OnlineGroups.Net can be configured to remove all message attachments; when an attachment is removed, the sender of the message is sent an email notifying them that it has been removed and suggesting that they post the file to the files area.
  • HTML email When OnlineGroups.Net is configured to remove message attachments, it also converts HTML email to plain text before forwarding it to the group members (the HTML version of an email is sent as an attachment); though some people perceive this as a limitation, it ensures that the message forwarded by email looks like the copy in the Messages area (which also has no HTML formatting); it is possible to have OnlineGroups.Net send a notification each time an HTML email has been converted to plain text.
  • bounce-handling OnlineGroups.Net tracks unsuccessful delivery of emails and notifies the participant using any other email addresses they have specified for themselves; after a configurable number of attempts (intended to prevent the user being disabled prematurely), OnlineGroups.Net suspends delivery to the bouncing address; the participant can re-enable it using their "email settings".
  • configurable email delivery Each participant can specify multiple email addresses that they can post with; an "email settings" interface enables them to select one or more of their addresses for email delivery for each group that they are a member of or they can choose to receive a "topic digest" or no email delivery at all.
  • Email Loop Handling OnlineGroups.Net identifies and terminates "Out of Office" reply loops; the loop-detection uses a variety of configurable methods to recognise automatically generated email.
  • Post-Limiting OnlineGroups.Net allows the Group Administrator to set a limit on the number of posts that each participant can make within a specifed period of time (eg 2 posts per 24 hours).
  • Topic Digest Each participant can choose to receive a list of the topics that have recently been posted to; for each topic, the digest lists the title (ie subject line), the number of posts, the number of posts in the last 24 hours and the date of the last post and provides a link to the topic in the Messages area (this example shows the Topic Digest for "Exploring OnlineGroups.Net" from 29 September 2005). A digest is sent out if there has been a post in the 24 hours since the last digest was sent, or if there have been seven days since the last digest was sent.
  • Moderation A Group Administrator can moderate a single user or a sub-group of users within a group.

Joining Groups

  • A Site Administrator can set the joinabilility of a group to "invitation-only", "by approval" or to "anyone, without approval".
  • Participants can join groups via email or the web.
  • A welcome message is automatically sent to members when they join a group.

Setting Individual Posting Limits

A Site Administrator can set the number of posts that each group member is able to post in any 48 hour period.

Files-Handling

All files that are attached to posts made by email, are uploaded to the Topics area. Files can also be uploaded using the web interface.

Group Administration Features

A Division Administrator (see below) is able to appoint a Group Administrator (who is not necessarily a member of the group). The purpose of the Group Administrator role is to enable someone to manage the running of an online group within the structure that was set up when the group was created (without being able to change that structure).

A Group Administrator is able to:

  • create new user accounts
  • join users to the group
  • remove users from groups
  • ban members from groups
  • remove files and folders from the Files area
  • enable and manage Moderation of a group