Cahoots Help |
This document is intended to explain how to collaborate using Cahoots.
Topics: Announcing a document, Connecting to a document, Handling user permissions.
First, select the "Announce Document" option from the Tools menu. The following dialog will appear:
This dialog only requires you to enter your name before announcing the current document. This name is used to identify you in the document with other users. Cahoots can also broadcast this document on your local area network, which is enabled by default. Uncheck the checkbox if you desire this document not broadcast itself.
The "Always use this name" checkbox will force Cahoots to always use the name entered in the above field when announcing documents. Checking this box will immediately announce documents in the future, rather than bringing up this dialog before announcing.
After selecting "OK", the document announces, and the chat pane on bottom, and the participants pane on the side show themselves.
For an explanation of user permissions, see Handling user permissions.
In order for users to join your document, they must know your IP address, and port that the document is listening on. This information is displayed in two places. In the chat pane:
and the participants pane:
Simply tell your collaborators this information for them to connect to you and start collaborating. Remember to promote them when they join your document!
In order to connect to a document, select the "Connect to Document" option from the Tools menu. The following dialog will appear:
This dialog requires you to enter your name, as well as the IP and port of the document you wish to connect to. If this document is on the same local area network, it may appear on the right side of the dialog. If this is the case, simply click that line to copy the connect information to the corresponding lines of the connect dialog.
The drop-down menu at the top of the left side of the dialog ("New..." in the above screenshot) allows you copy the connection information from your five most recently connected documents.
After selecting "OK", the document attempts to connect, and the chat pane on bottom, and the participants pane on the side show themselves. The participants pane on the right hand side is disabled until the owner of the document promotes you to Read Only or Read/Write status, as detailed in Handling user permissions.
When a document is first announced, the document owner is the only participant shown in the participants pane. The owner is permanently read/write enabled. Users that join start as "Waiting" for permissions to chat and edit the document.
Waiting participants can only see the owner in the participants pane, and cannot chat or edit the document.
Read Only participants can see all participants in the participants pane, can read (but not write to) the document, and chat.
Read/Write participants can see all participants in the participants pane, can read and write to the document, and chat.
Only the owner has the ability to promote, demote, and kick participants. In order to promote or demote a user, click their name, and then click "promote" or "demote" respectively. When a user is Waiting, they can be kicked from the document by pressing the demote button (which changes to "kick" for waiting users) again.