Communicating with teammates

One of the first activities you may want to perform when joining a project is meeting with, sending email to, and conversing with other team members. The CollabNet Baseline Project template provides a Communications page that allows you to perform the following functions:

• Find other project members - The Communications page is designed to show the names and roles of project members. You might also look for project members using the Membership link in the left navigation pane. Note that the lists of members and their roles may not be identical on these two pages. The Membership tool is primarily of interest to administrators. In contrast, the Communications page is designed to provide project members with the names of key project members, contact information for these people, and possibly information about their role in the project.
• Communicate with project members using CollabNet tools - These tools include announcements and discussions.
• Conduct chat sessions using the IRC tool - The Internet Relay Chat (IRC) program is a chat tool that is widely available as a download from the internet (see http://www.mirc.com/ for details). You can use IRC to launch informal discussions with team members. IRC allows you to communicate with specific groups of people and to have one-to-one conversations.
• Conduct Web-based meetings using WebEx - WebEx is a tool for online meetings, conferences, and other Web-based events. You can use WebEx to allow remote meeting participants to all view the same information in real time. WebEx permits you to schedule meetings in advance, to record meetings (audio and video), and to start ad-hoc meetings.

The Communications page appears when you click the Communications entry on the navigation toolbar or the Communications link in the left navigation pane.

Note: If you do not see a Communications page or if you do not see some component on this page that is described in this Help topic, an administrator may have removed this page from the process template for this project. If any elements mentioned in this Help topic are also missing (for example, the link to IRC), this may also be due to your local configuration.

Viewing and adding project member information

The Communications page is intended to display key project members, their email addresses, and links to display all of the issues assigned to these people in Project Tracker.

Note: A Help topic for project owners describes how to update the information in the Project Team table on this page. A Help topic for administrators describes how to update other information on this page.

To view project members from the Communications page:

1. Click the Projects page.
2. Click the link for a project that uses a process template.
3. Click the Communications link on the navigation toolbar or left navigation pane.
4. Scroll to the Participants table.

Communicating with team members using CollabNet tools

If your administrator has given you permission to do so, you can do the following:

• View and add announcements
• View and add discussion groups
• View and add email distribution lists.

Links to these actions are provided in the activity area. The activity area is either directly below the top navigation toolbar or at the top of the page. It is the area with a light blue background. For more information on these topics, see the online Help topics on the page that is displayed when you click these links.

Conducting chat sessions using IRC

The Communications page provides links to both launch an IRC session and to read additional information on IRC. Note that you must have installed and configured an IRC client for these chat sessions to work. See http://www.mirc.com/ for details. Additionally, an administrator must have configured the IRC link to launch your IRC session. The default link only displays Help for using IRC.

To launch IRC chat sessions from the Communications page:

1. Click the Projects page.
2. Click the link for a project that uses a process template.
3. Click the Communications link on the navigation toolbar or left navigation pane.
4. In the Realtime column of the activity area, click the link to launch an IRC session.
   The activity area is either directly below the top navigation toolbar or at the top of the page. It is the area with a light blue background.

Conducting meetings on the Web using WebEx

When you invoke WebEx from a CollabNet page, the actual WebEx page that is displayed depends on your local settings. In some organizations, you will be taken to your organization's home page on WebEx. If your organization does not have its own home page, you will be taken to the home page for WebEx.

To start a WebEx meeting from a project page:

1. Click the Projects page.
2. Click the link for a project that uses a process template.
3. Click the Communications link on the navigation toolbar or left navigation pane.
4. In the Realtime column of the Activities area, click the link for WebEx.
   The activity area is either directly below the top navigation toolbar or at the top of the page. It is the area with a light blue background.