WebBoard 5 Help

Reading Messages

Reading a Specific Message
Displaying New Messages
Displaying Today's Messages
Displaying Messages Addressed to Your Attention
Marking Messages as Read

Reading a Specific Message

When you click a message on the Conferences list, the message appears in the message window (the right frame unless you are using no-frames mode). By default, all subsequent messages in the topic are also displayed so you can read the responses to the message you opened. This is called full topic view. You can change to viewing one message at a time by editing your user profile.

Follow these steps to read specific messages:

From the Conferences list, select the conference you want to view and click its name or the expansion box (+ icon).
Locate the topic you want to read and do one of the following:
- Click the topic subject to display the topic message and responses in the message window. (If you have turned off Full topic view in your user profile, only the first message appears in the window.)
- Click the topic expansion box to view a list of messages. Find the response message you want and click it to display that message and subsequent responses in the message window.
Read the message, scrolling if necessary. After reading the message, you may do any of the following:
- To read the next message in a topic, scroll down or click the Next link at the top of the message window. If Next does not appear as a link, you are reading the last message in the topic.
- To read the previous message, click the Previous link at the top of the message window. If Previous does not appear as a link, you are reading the first message in the topic.
- To open the topic message and all responses so that you can scroll through them in order, click Entire Topic. To read another message from the expanded topic list, click the message in the conferences list.

Note
You can have WebBoard watch a topic (a message thread) for you. When a new message is posted to the topic, WebBoard sends you an email, alerting you to the new message. To start watching a topic, check the Watch this Topic box at the end of a message. For more information, see Watching Topics and Conferences.

Displaying New Messages

New messages are messages posted to a board since you last visited or since you manually marked all messages as read.

WebBoard has two ways you can get to new messages instantly. You can also view a list of messages posted today.

New Messages Link: Conferences List: At the top of the Conferences list are three links: All Messages, New, and Attn. Clicking these links switches between the full conference list, a list of conferences with new messages, and a list of conferences with messages posted to your attention. When you click New, the list of conferences with new messages appears over a changed background that indicates these are new messages. To see the new messages, expand any conference listed. An exclamation point to the right of the message indicates that it was posted to your attention. To read a message, click its name and it appears in the message window.

Tip
To read a message in context, click Entire Topic in the message menu and then scroll through the topic and all response messages.

New Messages Link: Welcome Page: When you log in to WebBoard, the Welcome page in the right frame may include a link indicating how many new messages you have. Click the link, and a list of conferences with new messages appears in the Conferences list frame (to the left). The background of the list changes to indicate these are new messages. Expanding any conference listed displays only the new messages in that conference. An exclamation point to the right of the message indicates that it was posted to your attention. To read a message, click its name, and it appears in the message window.

Displaying Today's Messages

Clicking the Today’s Messages link on the More Options menu gives you a quick listing of all messages posted that day. When you click this link, the Today’s Messages list shows messages by the conference, subject, and time posted, with the oldest listed first in each conference. Each subject is a link to the actual message, which appears in the message window when you click it.

Displaying Messages Addressed to Your Attention

When posting a message, users often have the option of asking WebBoard to alert certain users to the message. To help you identify these messages, conferences that have messages to your attention are marked with an exclamation point icon to the right of the conference name.

But you don’t need to search through the conferences list. At the top of the Conferences list are three links: All Messages, New, and Attn. Clicking these links switches between the full conference list, a list of conferences with new messages, and a list of conferences with messages posted to your attention.

When you click Attn, the list of conferences with messages posted to your attention appears and the frame background changes to indicate that you are viewing only messages posted to your attention. Expanding any conference listed displays only those messages. To read a message, click its name and it appears in the message window. To see only new messages posted to your attention, use the New link, as explained in the previous section.

You can always identify messages posted to your attention by the exclamation point to the right of the message in the conference tree. Even after you read a message, the symbol remains.

Marking Messages as Read

You have a choice of letting WebBoard automatically mark messages as read or marking them yourself.

To mark messages as read manually, follow these steps:

Click Mark Read on the menubar to open the Mark Messages Read page.
To mark all messages read in a single conference, click a conference. To mark all messages read in all conferences, click "Mark All Conferences Read." WebBoard immediately marks the messages as read and refreshes the conferences list.

To have WebBoard mark messages automatically, follow these steps:

Click More on the menubar and then click Edit Your Profile on the More Options menu.
On your User Profile, scroll down to the Automatically mark messages as read checkbox and check it. Click Save to save changes.
All messages will be marked as read the next time you click Logoff on the menubar or are inactive on the board for 30 minutes.