Caucus How-To: Pre-registering Users | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
I. Introduction
Note: this document only applies to Caucus version 4.08a or higher. Earlier versions do not have all of these features. The first time that a person uses Caucus, they will normally be asked to "register" themselves. This means that they will be asked to enter their full name, and (optionally) a telephone number, a brief personal introduction, an e-mail address, and so forth. This registration process only happens once, although a user can change their personal information at any time. |
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Alternately, the Caucus manager may choose to "pre-register" an individual user, or groups of users. This is particularly useful if you have a large body of users who are about to begin working with Caucus, and you want to enforce consistent use of names, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and so forth for this new group. Pre-registration also allows you to automatically join groups of users to specific conferences, which may ease the users' confusion about which conferences are important to them.
You can pre-register users in two different ways:
The rest of this document describes the use of wregister.
II. Using the WREGISTER script
To pre-register a batch of users, you must actually log in as the "Caucus" userid. (Under Unix, telnet to your host and login as Caucus. Under Windows/NT, login to the console as Caucus, and start a "cmd" or MSDOS window.)
From here, you will type the appropriate command to run the wregister script.
To use wregister, you must specify a filename on the command line. For example, to register users from the file prereg, type
wregister preregThe file prereg must be in the home directory of the Caucus account and contain the pre-registration information described below.
III. File Format -- Basic
The file which contains the list of users to be registered must be in a specific format. This format includes some necessary information and some optional information. The following information must be included:
The following information may also be specified:
The file may include information for as many users as the host computer system will support.
The information for each person must be supplied on 2 or more lines. These lines must be together in the file. The first line supplies items 1 through 4 from the list above, e.g.:
Jeff Victor:victor:jvictor:(313)-482-8710:Note these rules about the first line of a person:
So, the official technical specification for this line is:
Full Name:last_name:userid:phone:
The rest of the information lines for a person each begin (in the first column) with a special letter indicating the type of information supplied by that line. This letter must be uppercase.
The other mandatory line is just a line indicating that this is the end of this user's description. It is a single 'E' in the first column.
Here is an example of the simplest description:
Jeff Victor:victor:jvictor:(313)-482-8710: E
IV. File Format -- Optional Information
This section describes how to specify the optional information (items 5 through 10 in the list).
If you need to add a settings line, it must begin with an 'S'. This line must be in the same format as the "sys_Tset0" string in the dictionary file DIC2/america0. Any legal values can be specified. If the manager chooses to have the user start off with the 'normal' default settings, the line looks like this:
Soff 23 79 off caucus 8 12 default on 0 . off wordwrap 0 later execmenu
Specifying an initial conference "joins" the person as a member of the conference. It does not mark any of the conference items as "read", nor does it add the conference to the user's personal conference list.
Vmy_confs demonstration
adds the demonstration conference to the user's list.
V. A Complete Example
#This is the first user: Jeff Victor:victor:jvictor:(313) 482-8710: IThis is a user's brief introduction. IIt is two lines long. # This is a comment # # The rest of the lines for this person are conferences # to join the user into: Cdemonstration Csales Vmy_confs demonstration Vmy_confs sales E # #This is the second user, with no phone number, and a setting #for their "homepage" variable. Charles Roth:roth:roth:: IThis is the introduction. Cdemonstration Vhomepage http://gamgee.acad.emich.edu/~roth E
VI. Errors
If the program detects an unrecoverable error about a particular user (e.g. that ID already exists), it will complain about the user, not register him/her, and attempt to continue.
If the program thinks that the disk is full, it will mention this and then give up.
The software tries to protect the user from most mistakes, but it's possible to really confuse it, in which case it may complain and give up. On the other hand, if you include a colon as part of a user's name, it may fail in strange ways.