Getting Started with AnyOrg.com
Introduction
You might have been invited to AnyOrg.com by a friend or colleague to participate directly in a group, if so that's where you should start. Go back to your dashboard and you will see it in My Groups.
Once you've taken a look at the group you were invited to, take a tour around AnyOrg.com
Getting Started - Main Menu, Welcome! and Login
Get familiar with the Main Menu (horizontal menu located just below the header)
My Dashboard - provides a user dashboard display for all your groups, new and most recent content in your groups, and your relationships with other users. This is the page you will be taken to when you first login to AnyOrg.com
Public Groups - this is a listing of all public groups on AnyOrg.com, the display will be improved as more public groups become available.
About Us - Shares information you might find helpful in understanding our motivations for creating AnyOrg.com.
Contact Us - is our site-wide contact form where you can get support information, make suggestions, ask general questions or maybe even become a sponsor.
User Directory - this is a listing of directory information for our users. This displays the "Real Name" and Zip code you provided on directory information. This is the only information about you that we will provide publicly on the internet. We encourage you to use your real name, but be aware that some people will not. (As you connect with groups and establish relationships with other users, you can provide them with appropriate information as you choose. More about that later.)
Sidebar Menus and Blocks
As you visit AnyOrg.com you will see various Menus and "blocks" appear to the left depending on where you navigate to. The Welcome! menu provides links to the most common areas of the site, you will see this menu for all of the Main Menu pages and before you login.
If you are not logged in you are an anonymous user and can only see limited information. Using the login block at the left you can login to an existing account. If you don't already have an account you can to create an account (you need a valid email address).
Getting Started - My Account Settings and Profiles
My Account
Select My Account in the Welcome! menu, and you can change your Account user settings and create your profile information.
When your account was created, Your user name, email, and password were setup. You may have also provided your directory info (real name and zip code), which is used in the User Directory and available to all AnyOrg members. You may change any of this information on the My Account Screen as well as set any user preferences for your account.
Once you go to My Account you will see a horizontal list of links just below the header. When these links are selected, there may be a secondary list below depending on your permissions. You will not that View is selected, showing you a view of your account record. Others are:
- Apply for Role - Depending on the role your user has been assigned you will have different permissions. You can apply for a role with increased permissions on this screen. Roles may also be assigned for individual users which will provide additional features. The more permissions you have the more items might be in list of links at the top of the page.
- Bookmarks - Is a list of your site bookmarks you have selected on the site. As you look at a page you will notice a link at the bottom where you can bookmark it. Kind of like a favorites list.
- Edit - On this screen you can edit your account settings (more on this below)
- Messages - You might have gotten a private message from someone else on the site, you can view them here.
Profile Info
As you view the My Account screen you will see a number of links to "Create your ...Profile. Before filling out all your different profiles we recommend starting with the first and most basic, "Profile Info".
Basic profile is meant to provide a "thumbnail" introduction about you, your personality and contact preferences for any member at AnyOrg.com. You might decide to share this information with any user, not just members of groups you belong to, so be selective about what you write. There are three main "fields" where you can write information about yourself.
- Your Tagline - a favorite saying or label you might give yourself.
- About Me - What would you like people to know about you? Your interests
- AnyOrg.Com Preferences - Enter information here about your preferences regarding how you want people to contact you and how you intend to use AnyOrg.com. Hint: if you are new, you might want to mention that or let people know you are open to being contacted by certain groups like friends, neighbors or co-workers. Or perhaps you might want people to know how often you might check emails or would prefer to be contacted by phone by people who know you.
Getting Started - Points, Roles and Permissions
Points
As you looked at the My Account screen, you might have noticed the "User Points" area below the links for creating user profile information. Currently we using these points as a means of automatically increasing the level of access new users have on our site, rewarding your experience with greater levels of access. Our assumption is the more you use the site the more experience you have and the better you can benefit from having more features available to you and the groups you belong to.
We want to make sure you are comfortable with some of the unique ways we help you protect your information before we give you more options for sharing it with other users.
You earn more points when you...
- as you revisit and log into AnyOrg.com
- as you comment on posts
- invite people to AnyOrg.com
- read more site content
Roles and Permissions
As you get more experience with AnyOrg.com and new things begin to appear, it will help you to understand some of the basic concept that drives what you can do here.
On a very basic level there are "permissions" for specific things that members (users) can do, but users aren't assigned permissions directly. We have established user "roles" from a basic user to the most advanced. Each user is assigned (or promoted by their user points) to a role. Each role has been given specific permissions. A user can be assigned multiple roles and thus has all the permissions that have been assigned to any of your roles.
Get it? No?, well don't worry about it, we've set all this up for you. An example might help.
- If you looked at "Getting Started" before logging in or created an account. You might have noticed the User Directory did not appear in the main menu. That's because the system assumes this visitor is anonymous and doesn't have permission to see the directory.
- Once I log in to my account, the User Directory appears because now I am assigned to the "authenticated" role. (when a user is logged in they are automatically authenticated because they have a user account.) The authenticated user can see the User Directory and the user name. The user name however is not a link because they don't have the permission assigned to access a user profile. You may already be able to see these links since this is this level of access is provided with very few user points.
- Does that mean that someone with very little user points can see all my profile information? No of course not! Access to user profile information is limited to people you have an established relationships with. How do I do that? Chances are you don't yet have a role assignment with that permission yet. Keep working at it and when you do take a look at the next getting started section.
Hopefully that gives you a good idea about how points, permissions and roles work. If not, maybe you will be more comfortable that protections are there to keep your information safe. If you have questions about that visit our Privacy page.
