WebBoard is a tool for fostering communication, globally or locally, among
people with common interests, whether they be professional, civic, or social. WebBoard is
extremely flexible and convenient to use and manage. It can be used anywhere, any time,
either through a browser, email program, or newsreader. All users need is access to the
Internet or an intranet. An administrator can manage WebBoard through any browser, making
remote administration easy.
WebBoard is a tool for increasing communication, disseminating information, and
building community. It can be used to promote discussion for developing a product, hold
virtual office hours, or provide information and support to customers. WebBoard is
designed to bring people to a site and keep them there, unlike many web pages that have
links sending users to other sites on the Web. If boards are well-designed and maintained,
they can become an essential destination for a variety of people.
Community building
People with a common interest benefit from sharing ideas, discussing problems, and
negotiating solutions. Interests can range from programmers working with the Perl language
to residents of a large town. A town board, for example, might be hosted by the community
center or a homeowners’ association. There, residents share ideas and thoughts about
local schools, parks, and what they would like to see in their community. Action
committees emerge as needs are clarified.
Corporate Extranets
Extranets are emerging as an ideal way for a company to provide its customers
specific information that is not published or available for the general public. For
example, customers may use extranets to check out current inventories, check the status of
an order, or collaborate on a project. Some companies sell information, making the
research findings or libraries available over the pass-word-protected extranet. WebBoard
is well-suited as the “welcome” to an extranet, which requires a user account
and password to gain entry. Customers can also easily post questions and the company can
distribute news through the conferences.
Customer service/Technical support
WebBoard is an ideal way to provide customer service or technical support. In
conferences set up for specific product activities, a customer can post a ques-tion. Other
participants can answer from their own experience, or a staff member can provide an
official answer. The WebBoard Administrator may choose to moderate some of these
conferences to ensure that solutions are proper and won’t lead to bigger problems.
Once a solution is posted, it is available for other users to read. In fact, rather than
repeating the same information over and over, support staff can point users to WebBoard
conferences for answers to questions. WebBoard’s message searching functions quickly
find information on a given topic, posted by a specific user, or from a specific date.
Foreign-language conferences
Whether it’s for a discussion area for international customers, or simply a
place to practice with the French club, WebBoard makes setting up foreign-language
conferences easy. Nearly every element displayed by WebBoard is an HTML document or image
that can be translated or replaced. System messages that are hard coded can also be
translated, too. Individual language files make it possible to have system messages in
different languages for different boards.
Information management
We live in the Information Overload Age. Having too much information can be useless
or even counterproductive. WebBoard helps web administrators accumulate and manage
user-generated content so that it is readily available and logically organized. It allows
them to alert those who most need to read a message by posting it to their attention.
Users can isolate messages requiring their immediate attention, or restrict their view to
new messages only.
Online brainstorming
WebBoard makes it easy for team members to hold brainstorming sessions despite
being separated by time and distance. The fundamental rule of brain-storming is never to
discard ideas, but record them all. In the traditional brainstorming model, each idea may
be the seed of the final, creative solution. WebBoard keeps conference postings until the
administrator removes them or they reach an expiration date. Participants in a WebBoard
brainstorming session can refer to earlier comments, previous ideas, and the entire flow
of the conversation throughout its lifetime.
Project collaboration
As businesses have become more flexible in reacting to changing market-places and
the increasing pace of technological advancements, much has been said and written about
the virtual corporation. Virtual corporations or virtual teams rely heavily on electronic
communication, such as email, file transfers, voicemail, pagers, and faxes, to share and
track the issues that their projects face. WebBoard’s ability to store information by
topic and attach files, combined with its fast search engine, makes it an excellent choice
for offsite groups collaborating on the same project.
Teaching tool at educational institutions
WebBoard permits courses to have private asynchronous discussions—so
participants can read and post messages at whatever hour of the day they’re most
productive. At a college where discussion is central to the learning process, WebBoard
encourages all students to have a voice, even those who shy away from public speaking.
Since it’s easy to use, students can begin participating with WebBoard right away.
WebBoard can also be used by various campus committees and academic organizations to post
announcements and generate discussion about current issues.
Virtual meetings
We’re all familiar with the often impossible task of coordinating schedules
for meetings to review and discuss time-critical information with our peers. Scheduling
meetings with multiple participants from far-flung locations can often be more time
consuming than the meetings themselves. However, WebBoard provides an effective
alternative by allowing a meeting place without regard to time or location.
