As I told you at the start of this Appendix, creating a room is fairly complex business, considering the choices you have to make. Now that we know what we're dealing with, let's see how we can use the various settings to create a few rooms with varying degrees of user participation and control.
The boardroom is an example of a room that pays special attention to exclusivity and takes strong measures to restrict the members who have access to the group. Here are the room settings for the boardroom.
Every room has a Room ID, a Room Name, and a brief Description. This helps users understand what a room is for. We want the boardroom to be a private room for board members only and have therefore locked it with a password. We've also made the room "members-only", so users have to be listed under one of the three allowed branches (owner, admin, member) of user permission to be allowed entry into the room.
Because this is a low volume room, due to its limited number of members, we've also allowed the presence of all members to be broadcast, to keep everyone updated about the movement of the other board members. To make sure who's who, members are only allowed to log in with their registered nicknames and everyone can see the real Jabber ID of every member in the room. There is no specific topic for this room because the board members can discuss anything, so every member has been given the power to change the topic. Despite its exclusivity, we've allowed it to be listed in the directory of available rooms, lest our dear board members forget the name of the room they want to log into. Finally, we've also disabled logging of the conversation in this room.
The exact opposite of the boardroom, is the lounge, which doesn't restrict access, and gives members an almost free run through the room. Here are its settings:
The first thing you'll notice is that this room allows an Unlimited number of participants. Due to its size and the amount of chatter it'll generate, we'll spare everyone from seeing the presence notifications of members joining and leaving the room. Because this is an informal, but moderated room, the room members are allowed to change their nicknames, but moderators can find out the real Jabber IDs of users, which will help them ban users who aren't decent and courteous to other members.
A room such as this has to be listed in the public directory of available rooms, and members have the power to invite others to join the fun. It does start of with a topic, but everyone has the right to change it. There's no point clogging the logs with all the off-topic chatter, so we've left out that option.
Somewhere between the air-tight boardroom and the chaotic lounge is the "sales HQ". It's dedicated to sales-related talk and restricts access, but allows a little latitude. Here's how it's set up:
Although the room is listed in the directory, it is limited to members-only. But there's no password, and members are allowed to invite other members. This is done assuming that, from time to time, the group may need to invite other users for brief discussions and clarifications. For example, our sales people might want to invite people from other departments such as accounts to clarify details regarding a particular transaction.
The group is a general purpose discussion group, and begins without a topic, allowing members to change the subject as they see fit. Most importantly, all activities and discussions in this room are logged.