The following procedure describes how to create a new category.

To create a new category

  1. Open the Group Chat Administration Tool.

  2. In the Chat Roomslist, click the category in which you want to create a new subcategory.

  3. On the Filemenu, click New, and then click Category.

  4. In the New Categorydialog box, type a name and description for the category:

    • In the Namebox, type a name for the new category. The name must begin with a letter. It cannot contain spaces.

    • In the Descriptionbox, type a full description for the new category.

  5. Specify options that control the behavior of this category:

    • To require future subcategories or chat rooms in this category to use this category’s settings, select the Subcategories and chat rooms must inherit settingscheck box.

    • To allow future subcategories of this category to be able to restrict scope further than the scope for this category, select the Allow subcategory scope changescheck box.

    • To start with an empty membership list, select the Create a new membership listcheck box. In most cases you’ll want to leave this check box cleared, so that you will start with the membership list of the parent category.

  6. Specify default options for all chat rooms and subcategories in this category:

    • To make chat rooms visible to all users in the category’s scope when they search for chat rooms to join, in the Visibilitybox, click Scoped.

    • To make chat rooms visible only to their members, click Private. Using a visibility of Privatemakes a chat room less accessible to new members, but it can be useful in hiding the chat room name from users who are not on the members list.

    • To automatically send invitations to users who are added to the members list of chat rooms in this category, in the Invitationsbox, click Yes.

      Caution:
      When active, the server will immediately issue an invitation to join the chat room to all users who are on the members list. This can have unintended consequences if a user creates a new chat room with the default membership list, and then subsequently refines the members list to a smaller group. Those users who were excluded will receive both an invitation and a notice that they have been restricted from participating.
    • To have chat rooms created in this category persist group chat content, in the Chat Historybox, click Yes.

    • To allow category members to post files and Web links with their chat messages, in the File Uploadsbox, click Yes.

    • To allow category members to post only messages and Web links, in the File Uploadsbox, click No.

  7. To prevent category members from creating new chat rooms in this category, in Can create chat rooms and subcategories, click No. (This setting applies only to category members; Channel administrators and category managers can always create new chat rooms.)

  8. In each box under Category Settings, you can click Inherit from Parentto keep the same setting as for the parent category (shown under Parent Settings), or you can select a specific setting.