On this page: Introduction Pricing and Purchase Information Requirements Features Table

Site Manager is the main administrative module in Convea's Intranet Suite and Platform 6 applications. From the Site Manager front panel you will see a selection of icons that manage the different categories. The main administrative categories are outlined below.

Users and Locations

From the Users and Locations applet you can create, edit and delete users, as well as apply user access profiles that limit what users can and cannot access in the system. You can create separate sites, departments and teams and drag your users around into these locations. Structuring your site to reflect your real world organisational structure is a great way to manage people, and a great way for your users to get a better feel for the system. Grouping users in this way also allows you and your delegates to easily setup permissions; most modules will let you limit access to specific users and groups, and just adding in a whole team or department means you don't have to set up permissions for each user at a time. It also means that just by dragging a user into a site, department or team they will automatically inherit all of the permissions for that location.

Modules

The Modules applet is really where the modular nature of the system shines through. As well as being able to modify settings for all of the modules that ship with the system, you can create an unlimited number of your own private modules. A "module" is a very flexible object; you could create a new module called "Web Mail", for example (these are known as Shell modules), and simply enter the URL of another web application. The Web Mail module can then be rolled out to as many users as you need, and each user will see a convenient icon in their navigation bar, and the shell module behaves just a native system module would.

The shell module functionality is what makes Intranet Suite a great cornerstone for you internal communication needs. If you have an existing Intranet or access other web applications, all of these can be brought into Intranet Suite and rolled out as if they were native modules, using the same user-access and visibility mechanisms that the rest of the system uses.

The Modules applet also supports TS Modules, or Terminal Services modules. Again, you can create as many of these as you wish, and either have them point to dedicated Terminal Services application servers, or simply provide the feature and let your users determine the target server. You could create separate TS modules to host your installed applications like Microsoft Word and have them deployed in this way.

Of course, the Modules applet will also let you install new modules from Convea as we release them. This functionality works exactly like a conventional operating system, with the bonus that installation is fully automatic and can run over the internet.

Security Monitor

The Security Monitor applet is one we are especially proud of and is the front end for the security subsystem that is part of our security DNA architecture. Security Monitor closely watches the system for abnormal behaviour and anything it doesn't like it consults its setting to determine what action it should take. Security events in the system are classed in three levels:

• Low: A user is performing an action that represent no threat to the system.
• Moderate: A user may be attempting to read or modify data that they don't have access to.
• Critical: A user is attempting an administrative level action or is attempting to read or delete secure data.

• Deny and Warn: Denies the user action and warns both the adminstrator and the user.
• Deny and Strike: Denies the user action and increments a strike counter. Strike counters can set so that after a number of strikes has been entered against a user the system will automatically suspend the users account.
• Suspend the Account: the users account will automatically be suspended.

Reports

The Reports applet is a simply tool for viewing system statistics. From here you can see who is online, what their session duration is, how many hits each module has received, how much file space as user is using.

Access Restrictions

The Access Restrictions applet lets you setup basic rules that restrict general access to the system to known users, either by IP address or domain. There is also the option here to ban users by IP address and modify IP bans that may have been entered by the security subsystem.

User and Guest Accounts

The User and Guest Accounts applet lets you create ways for new users to access your system, as well as specifying settings for existing users. The system allows for both full licensed user accounts and unlimited temporary guest accounts. From here you can also set options that force users to login with NT authenticated accounts. Checking this option removes the systems normal username and password login requirements and if the NT account matches, a user will be logged in automatically.

Group Details

Group Details lets you set the name and type of your organisation, as well as a description that will be shown in the site tree. You can also supply a support email for users who may encounter issues and need a contact within your organisation.

Profile Manager

Profile Manager is where you create the user access profiles that are the cornerstone of the systems access policies. A user access profile is simply a list that you check which modules, and what permissions in each of the modules, a user will have. You can create as many Access Profiles as you need. Once created, Access Profiles can be automatically assigned to users when they create new accounts, or you can apply them to each site, department and team as necessary.

Roles Manager

The Roles Manager lets you create and assign roles to your users. A role can be anything, its just a textual job description, but they also support hierarchies- future modules will allow for role based features too, and organisation structure reporting is coming in future versions.

General Settings

General Settings covers everything other system setting that didn't deserve a category of its own. From here you can specify settings such as maximum file attachments sizes, maximum allowed attachments per item, limit disc usage etc.

Date and Time Settings

Convea's Platform 6 software, including Intranet Suite 2005 has exceptional date and time handling. We learnt some hard lessons with our early software when it comes to writing good internationalised software and the lessons bore fruit. The Date / Time Settings dialog is the face to some complex background time management; you simply set the Server Time Zone and let your users take care of themselves. From then on every module in the system will automatically translate dates and times between your users time zones, so everyone sees times in their local time- no more wondering just exactly a display time is, or having to manually translate them. As an added bonus for our military clients all time zones can now set in NATO format too.

Convea Plus

Convea Plus is the gateway to a range of online services that convea.net provides for our applications. Right now we have the dictionary service and calendar events that can be updated automatically, and in the coming months we will be rolling out some more exciting services that will integrate seamlessly with your Convea experience.

SSL Settings

Convea's software is fully SSL compliant. From the SSL Settings dialog you can enable/disable SSL access (providing you have the correct server certificate installed) and even override user's requests to force them to login securely.

Site Access

Finally, the Site Access panel is the big system Stop/Go switch. If you need to suspend access to your site for maintenance, or any reason at all, this panel will deny all access to the system to everyone but the root administrator. When the system is shut down users will see a convenient offline message.

This module is part of the core Intranet Suite and does not need to be purchased seperately.

Convea 6 Platform or Intranet Suite 2005.

Available as part of the Developer Kit and on request

• Database Schema
• Developers Guide

	Standard Edition
Product Features:
Powerful site management features
Easy to user applet/icon access
Visual prompting for system areas that need attention
Integrated Bug Reporting and Feedback
Easily extendable through script