Lesson #2: Fitting Your Needs

You can tailor the Xythos on Demand Web View to fit your work habits and personal preferences. For example, one person might spend a great deal of time adding and organizing documents, in which case, the most common actions are uploading, tagging, and moving. A different person might spend more time consuming content instead of contributing it in which case bookmarking, subscribing and downloading documents are most important actions.

In the Web View, you can change the information displayed about documents and folders, make particular actions immediately available and set the information stored about yourself.

 

Task #2a: Displaying and Ordering Columns

First, we will change the columns of information displayed when browsing documents and folders. Make sure that you are in the Document Manager view before getting started.

  1. From the toolbar buttons on the right, click View.   Then select Add/Remove columns.
    You now see the pages where you make choices about column listings. There is a lot of information which you can view about a document. You can choose standard properties or properties from several document classes.

  2. Select Standard Properties from the dropdown menu. You will now see the properties which can be added to your Web View under Available Columns.

  3. Select the Created On column option and then click the right arrow to add it to your Current Columns.
    If it is already selected, select a different column to display.

  4. Click OK.
    The Document Manager now displays the new information about documents and folders. We can also change the order in which this information appears.

  5. Click on a column heading, such as Size, and without releasing the mouse button, drag the heading to the far right side of the Document Manager.
    Move the mouse over the line between two headings. You should see the cursor change into a two-headed arrow.

  6. Click and drag the cursor to the left or right.
    You now know how to resize these columns, in case you have allocated too much or too little space for the text displayed.

 

Task #2b: Selecting the Available Toolbar Buttons

Next, we will see how to change the Web View toolbar buttons.

  1. Click the Setup link at the top of the Web View.

  2. Click the My Settings tab, then click the Toolbar Buttons link on the left-side navigation.

  3. Uncheck the Copy, Move, Delete, and Rename buttons.
    We will pretend that you are a user who spends more time consuming content than contributing it. Therefore, document management actions such as Move and Rename are less important than options like bookmarks.

  4. Check the Save to ZIP File, Bookmark, Subscribe, and RSS buttons.

  5. Click Apply.
    The toolbar buttons now fits the way you work.

 

Task #2c: Entering Personal Information

Xythos on Demand needs to keep some information about you. For example, the service needs your e-mail address to send you notifications of changes to documents to which you have subscribed. More on this subscription feature later. You can edit most of this information through the Web View.

  1. At the top of the Web View, click Setup, then My Settings tab.
    You now see several links representing the different ways in which you can configure your personal information or preferences.

  2. Click the User Information link and change the Timezone to match where you are in the world, and then click Apply.

  3. Click the My Contacts tab.
    Contacts provide a way to streamline collaboration with anyone with whom you work on a regular basis.

  4. Click New Contact.
    You may add a new contact by entering their Xythos username directly or you can search for a user then add them as a contact. We are looking for a particular user right now.

  5. In the Username field, enter cwilson and click OK.
    Your search found one user, Cindy Wilson, who is added to your contact list.

  6. Click the Home link at the top left of the Web View.

 

What's next

Rarely do you create, edit, and store documents purely for your own benefit, so in the next lesson we'll learn how to share documents with other users.