Site Features

Personalisation:

Customisable Look and Feel:

site layout, fonts format and styling can be customised to meet individual requirements

Accessible with Ordinary Email and Web Browser:

Social Orientation:

all site content and features are organised to support the groups and communities that people work and learn in
Online Groups can be hidden (so only the group members can see the existence of the group), visible (with public and private areas), or open (non-members can see all areas of the group)

Structured Content:

GroupServer sites can include content such as News Items and Content Libraries (links, files, articles)
all GroupServer content is stored in standards-compliant structure (currently RSS and working towards DocBook) and can be rendered as HTML or PDF

Surveys:

surveys can be created for participant surveys, polls or gathering feedback
question-types can include yes/no, likert scale, choose one item from a list, choose one or more items from a list, text, comment or numeric
questionnaires can be web-based or generate a paper-based questionnaire (PDF) and web data-entry form
GroupServer automatically generates reports on survey results (PDF format)

Data-Based Content:

GroupServer can display database generated content such as assessment results, invoices or participant photo-sheets
database generated content can be displayed as HTML or dynamically generated PDF in customised print-oriented formats

Search:

the GroupServer Search feature find search text in messages files (descriptions only - search of file contents to be implemented) of the specific groups that each participant has access to (search of static content and participant information is in the pipeline)

Participant and Group Features

Email Groups:

Email Groups enable ordinary email to be used to support 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
email features include customisable subject line prefixes, customisable footers
each participant can customise the email addresses used to send/receive email for each Online Group
GroupServer identifies and terminates "Out of Office" reply loops
Web features include "Conversations" view that supports multiple concurrent conversations
"Posts" view shows individual posts in date order (with links from each post to the Conversation that it is part of)
Web message-rendering removes encoding from HTML email

Shared Files Area:

shared files area enables a group to store its key files in a central location that all group members can access easily
files have a description and link to the person who uploaded it
files can be organised into folders

Participant Information:

each person's Participant Details page displays a bio, the email addresses that the participant chooses to display, an optional photo and a list (with links) of the groups that the participant is a member of
Participants can modify their bio, change their password, and specify the email addresses that they wish to use to send/receive Online Group posts