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CollabWorx' Secure Instant Messenger (SIM) is a community
awareness and instant messaging tool. SIM can be also used as an entry
point to our family of collaboration solutions like
instant meetings and secure
communication portals.
As opposed to consumer-grade instant messaging tools, CollabWorx SIM
does not rely on individually configured buddy lists. Instead, it uses
the notion of user or centrally controlled communities that can correspond
to projects, departments, or offices. This key feature makes SIM a more
appropriate communication solution in business environments.
Another important distinction of CollabWorx SIM versus consumer-level
instant messaging tools is security. While other IM tools send messages
in open text (easily readable to anybody on Internet), CollabWorx SIM
uses strong (128-bit) public
key encryption for every message.
Here is a short guide to CollabWorx SIM:
A locked keypad in the message composer window indicates
that the message will be encrypted before being sent.
Accessing Your Community
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Double-click on the SIM icon in the system tray to see who's online,
send messages, send e-mail, access your portal, or start an instant
meeting.
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Key to User Status
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Description
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Comments |
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User is available
for instant messaging and instant meetings. |
User-defined.
This is default setting. Right-click inside of the main SIM panel
or on the SIM tray icon and select Change Status sub-menu to change
your status. |
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User is busy.
Please, send important messages or meeting invitations only. SIM will
issues issues a warning before sending an IM or invitation to a busy
user. |
User-defined |
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Do not disturb.
In this state, SIM will decline to send messages or to invite the
user to instant meetings. You can chose to send user an e-mail message
directly from SIM panel by right-clicking user name and selecting
"Send e-mail message" option. |
User-defined |
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User is participating
in an instant meeting. Two new options become active in the
user menu (right-click user name): the user in a meeting can invite
others to join; others in SIM community can join the user in the meeting. |
Automatically
set when user enters a meeting, restored to the default or to the
user-defined value when user leaves the meeting. |
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User is idle. |
Automatically
set after 10 minutes of inactivity on user workstation.
This is "awareness" feature. It does not change in any way
how messages are handled. The messages will be sent to the user, queued,
and displayed when user returns. No messages are ever lost. |
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User is (figuratively
:-) )asleep. |
Automatically
set after an hour of inactivity on user workstation.
This is "awareness" feature. It does not change in any way
how messages are handled. |
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User
is absent. |
User-defined
or set automatically after 3 hours of inactivity on user workstation.
This is "awareness" feature. It does not change in any way
how messages are handled. |
| None |
User is not
listed. |
User-defined.
To protect privacy, a user can decide not to be listed in SIM. User
still can send messages and receive replies. |
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SIM Settings
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Right-click SIM icon in the system tray or in the main SIM window
(outside of the user name column) to access "Settings"
menu.
From there, you can modify your status ...
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... or switch from one community to another.
User only sees communities for which s/he has been approved.
Selecting "Properties" from the menu leads to a series
of windows that let you define your personal settings.
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Define personal information in the “Identity” tab.
We strongly endorse provideing as much information as possible.
In business environment anonymous users are not well liked :-)
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IMPORTANT UPDATE: the image shown above is outdated.
The URL for IM service hosted by CollabWorx should read http://community.collabworx.com/SecureIM.
Contact your system administrator for community list URL if you
use an in-house or ASP-provided SIM installation.
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Set up community directory and select your
default community in the “Communities” tab.
SIM will remember the community you visited last and restore it
if you restart the messenger.
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NOTA BENE: for privacy reasons, message logging is disabled
by default. You must set it up by yourself.
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Choose your preferable message format: Peedy
The Parrot, a synthesizing speech Microsoft Agent character, or
a plain (but much faster) dialog box.
Store every incoming and outgoing message in a local log file. |
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NOTA BENE: initial setup of these parameters reflects Instant
Meeting services hosted by CollabWorx. Contact your system administrator
for correct settings for your in-house or ASP hosted system!
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Set TANGO Interactive™ (CWP) integration parameters for your
instant meetings. The URL defined here will be used to start (or
join) a virtual or instant meeting.
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to top
More on SIM security:
CollabWorx SIM server comes with an embedded, completely maintenance
free PKI (Public Key Infrastructure). When a user starts SIM for the first
time a pair of keys is automatically generated. Public keys are then automatically
distributed to all members joining the group. As a result, all users have
capability to send and receive encrypted messages. When a new user joins,
his/her public key is automatically distributed as well.
Use of Public Key Infrastructure eliminates all tasks that your company
IT personnel would have to complete to ensure secure information exchange.
There is no need to set up a repository of passwords or encryption keys.
SIM is an entirely self-contained, zero-maintenence solution.
To maintain compatibility with earlier versions of the messenger and
with other non-secure instant messaging products, SIM sends un-encrypted
messages to all users that did not provide their public key. An open keypad
in message composer window indicates that the message will be sent in
clear.
Optionally, the SIM server infrastructure can be enhanced by user
and workgroup maintenance tools. These tools provide authentication
and authorization mechanism, as well as the workgroup access policy definition
tools. For enterprise integration this set of tools can interface to the
company directory servers.
With all options installed, SIM provides an enterprise class, complete
secure instant messaging infrastructure.
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Troubleshooting:
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Problem: My list of communities is empty!
Solution: You have problems with getting community list.
Please, try this
URL . You should get a page with the following contents:
<!Community Description
File. Version 1.0. Copyright 2000-2001 by CollabWorx>
Public Community;rtm.collabworx.com:49502;
CollabWorX SIM Public Community; http://www.collabworx.com; http://www.collabworx.com/peoplewatch/i/bird.bmp;
https://ret.collabworx.com/portal
If you don't, please, make sure that the URL
pointing to community list distribution server is correct and
try again.
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Problem: I am on-line but SIM tells me it cannot connect
to the server.
Solution: This may happen if either the server is down for
some reason, the network connection to server is down, or when your
corporate firewall blocks outgoing TCP connection on the server
port. We have devised a procedure that will help you diagnose the
problem
Try to access the following URL:
CollabWorx
SIM test site
If you can access this URL, you will find there next steps of
the procedure.
If the URL above cannot be accessed, you most likely have a very
restrictive corporate firewall setup. The remedy depends on setup
details. Contact your network administrator and ask for availability
of a SOCKS
proxy server. If there isn't any, you cannot use SIM unless
your firewall administrator enables outgoing TCP ports 49501
to 49599 (these port range has been selected so that only
public ports are used and that the range does not include any
of the well-known ports used by malicious Trojan
applications). If SOCKS proxy server is available, you may
download and install a nifty product called SocksCap,
and configure it to use your corporate SOCKS proxy server to bypass
firewall blocks.
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Problem:After a long time without activity the SIM window
shows no users!
Solution: This happens if the users are connected to SIM
server via a firewall. Nearly all firewalls have a security mechanism
that terminates non-active socket connection after some predefined
time. The time-out may be anywhere between 30 minutes and several
hours. We plan to circumvent this mechanism in next release; for
the time being a community switch will restore SIM to normal state.
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Problem: I hit enter key when composing message and it was
sent before I finished to type it.
Solution: Text in message composer window is automatically
formatted. Hitting "Enter" sends the message. It is a
design choice, dictated by the way Microsoft Agent treats text input.
Please, try to get used to it :-)
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Problem: When I log in to my laptop when the laptop is off-line,
I get an error message saying SIM cannot connect to server.
Solution: This is normal. SIM simply reminds you that you
are off-line. No action is necessary: when you connect to Internet,
SIM will automatically restore the connection.
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Problem: I accidentally dismissed the message before reading
it. How can I retrieve it now???
Solution: Right click on the SIM icon in the system tray
to access settings menu. Select "View message log". All
incoming and outgoing messages are stored in this file. Important:
to protect your privacy the messages are NOT logged by default.
To enable logging you have to explicitly
set up log file name.
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Problem: I click on "My portal" and end up seeing
a page from CollabWorx website describing some portal products.
What's going on?
Solution: The sponsor of your community chose not to set
up a secure collaboration portal so far. You are being sent to a
default page, which happens to be portal info page. You need to
subscribe to a portal service to be teleported there from SIM.
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