Online status display
The online status display indicates the “BSCW presence” of members of a shared workspace, i.e. their online status with regard to their activity in BSCW. The online status display is shown below the navigation bar of the shared workspace and is activated with or . In the first case, all members are shown with their online status; in the second case, only those members are shown that have recently been active in BSCW.
You can deactivate the display of your presence in BSCW to other users under in the section ‘General’, subsection ‘Privacy’, of the action form. In this case your contact status is permanently set to “not available”.
Figure 21: Online status display
“BSCW presence” is measured by the time span between now and the last user activity in the BSCW Web browser window. Window activation, mouse movements or key strokes in the window count as activity in the sense of BSCW presence. The online status is signaled by different colours of the status icon and a corresponding tooltip:
o green / available (< 5 min): the user has been active during the last five minutes;
o grey / inactive (< 60 min): the user has not been active during the last five minutes, but within the last hour;
• red / unavailable: the user has not been active during the last hour or may be not even logged in to BSCW.
The time spans given correspond to the default configuration of the online status display. Your server may be configured differently. If in doubt, ask your BSCW administrator. If a user is active, the online status display is updated automatically.
In addition, active users may indicate to other users via contact status that they are busy or do not want to be disturbed. They even may hide their active status completely from other users.
• Click
on the icon 
on the right margin of the
contact status line. Choose from one of the options offered: “busy”, “don’t
disturb” or “unavailable”. With the former two options you are given the
opportunity to enter a note displayed to other users when they point to your
contact status icon.
The button to change the contact status takes on the colour of the status that you have chosen. You may change your contact status this way at any time.
Consequently, there are two more values for the contact status:
o yellow / busy: the user is logged in, but is busy and wants to be contacted in urgent cases only.
o orange / don’t disturb: the user is logged in, but does not want to be disturbed.
###check (unavailable?) In order to contact a user, you can click on any user name listed in the online status display. This will show the user pop-up.
• Click [E-Mail], to send an e-mail message to the user.
• Click [Details] to have the user info page shown offering all contact information that this user has entered into the personal profile.
The chances to reach a user with one of the online tools listed under ‘Contact details’ are of course better, when this user has been recently active in BSCW. See 5.1.6 Contacting contacts for action details.
The online status display is turned off with .
Note: The online status display will also be shown in your address book giving the online status of all users contained in your address book. An online status display will not be shown in one of your private folders including your home folder, even if activated.