Working with items

About items

Items in your eRooms are the building blocks of your projects. They hold all your project information and provide structure for organizing your work.

Every eRoom item has a unique set of properties that defines its purpose and describes its characteristics. All items have a name or a title that allows them to be easily identified. When you create an item, the Create wizard guides you in setting its initial properties.

Standard item types

Here are the standard types of eRoom items that you can create (except for the recycle bin):

Type	Icon	Description	Can it be hidden?
Folder		A page that contains other items, and in which you can create, store, and organize items. eRoom folders are like folders on your desktop or in a file cabinet.	Yes.
Discussion		A multi-person conversation made up of several individual topics, which can include attachments, nested comments, and votes.	Yes, but not individual topics.
Note		A simple text page, with areas for file attachments and comments.	Yes, but not individual comments.
Poll		A page for taking a vote. You can pose a question to your team, specify ballot choices, capture votes, and tabulate results.	Yes, but not individual votes.
Calendar		A simple team calendar, with month, week and list views, recurring events, and synchronization to Outlook (plug-in only).	Yes, but not individual events.
Project plan		A simple project schedule with a Gantt chart and, with the plug-in only, synchronization to Outlook. You can group and filter the project tasks, and report actual progress.	Yes, but not individual tasks.
Database		An organized collection of information relating to a particular subject or purpose, such as keeping track of customer records, or managing a bookstore inventory.	Yes, but not individual database entries or approval-process database steps.
Inbox		A special folder that can receive and store email.	Yes, including individual emails.
Other file		Any file you can bring into your eRoom from your desktop or disk (for example, Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint).	Yes, but not individually tracked versions.
Link		A shortcut to a file or page in your eRoom, to another eRoom, or to a Web site.	Yes.
Recycle bin		A container that stores deleted items until they are copied out of the bin, deleted from the bin, or until the eRoom's coordinator empties the bin.	No.

Note: You cannot hide the front page of an eRoom.

To create an item or add a file (or attached item)

When you create an item, it is either an eRoom item or a file you upload.

Create an item (without uploading a file):

Create an item by uploading a file or attachment:

In the button bar of the eRoom's front page, click .

Or, in a folder's button bar, click .

Or, in the command bar of an item box or attachment box, click "create".

Or, in empty area of an item box or attachment box, right-click and pick "Create Item".

The Create page opens.

Pick an item.

If you pick "Other File", the Add File page opens so you can upload a file. In this case, pick a file and continue with step 2 in the procedure to the right.

If you are creating an item in a folder, template items (customized versions of standard eRoom items) might be among your choices.

The page or wizard for that type of item opens and guides you through the required and optional settings that define the item.

Complete the wizard.

The item is created.

In the command bar of an item box or attachment box, click "add file".

Or, in empty area of an item box or attachment box, right-click and pick "Add File".

The Add File page opens.

Pick the file you want to add.

(See Files for information about version tracking and private drafts.)

If you want to add more than one file, select "Upload, then add another".

Click "OK".

The file is uploaded, thus creating an item.

See also: Working with Content Server-linked files for information about adding a file from a Documentum Docbase, or adding a file from your computer and linking it to a Docbase.

See also: About access control below for information about the default access settings for new items you create.

Plug-in only: You can drag and drop a file or folder from your Windows desktop into an eRoom item or attachments box.

To open an item:

In the item box, attachment box or map, click the item to open its page.

Or, right-click the item's icon and pick "View" from the pop-up menu.

The item page opens.

To edit an item:

Click at the top of an item page, next to its name.

Or, in the item box, attachment box or map, right-click the item's icon and pick "Edit" from the pop-up menu.

The Edit page for the item opens. Or, for items you create with a wizard (such as polls and databases), a wizard page opens that asks you to pick from a list of item-specific actions you can take.

To delete an item:

In the item box, attachment box or map, right-click an item's icon and pick "Delete" from the pop-up menu.

Or, in details view, select the check box next to an item and click "delete" in the command bar.

Or, on an item page, to delete one of your comments or votes, click the delete icon ().

Deleting an item (except for a Content Server-linked file) sends it to the eRoom's Recycle Bin, where it stays until it is either restored or permanently deleted.

Note: You can also drag and drop eRoom items into and out of the recycle bin.

To move an item:

In the item box, attachment box or map, right-click the item's icon and pick "Cut" from the pop-up menu.

Or, in details view, select the check box next to an item and click "cut" in the command bar.

The item's name is grayed out, indicating it has been cut.

Go to where you want to move the item, and in the item box, right-click an empty area and pick "Paste" from the pop-up menu.

Or, in the item or attachment box, click "Paste" in the command bar.

Or, in the map, right-click an icon and pick "Paste" from the pop-up menu.

The moved item retains its access control settings.

Note: You can also drag an item and drop it at a new location.

To copy an item:

In the item box or map, right-click the item's icon and pick "Copy" from the pop-up menu.

Or, in details view, select the check box next to an item and click "copy" in the command bar.

Go to where you want to paste the new, copied item, and in the item box, right-click an empty area and pick "Paste" from the pop-up menu.

Or, in the item or attachment box, click "Paste" in the command bar.

Or, in the map, right-click an icon and pick "Paste" from the pop-up menu.

To paste an item onto the front page of an eRoom, right-click the icon () next to the eRoom's name, and pick "Paste" from the pop-up menu.

See also: About access control below for information about the default access settings for new items you copy and paste.

To choose a different icon for an item:

When you create or edit an item, click "change icon" in the Create wizard or on the Edit item page.

The Change Icon page opens and eRoom displays a set of available icons for that type of item.

Click the one you want to use, and then click "OK".

To rename an item:

In the item box, attachment box or map, right-click an item's icon and pick "Rename" from the pop-up menu.

Or, you can edit an item and change its name or title.

Note: You cannot rename a calendar event while a real-time meeting started from it is in progress.

About access control

For any new item you create, any member who can get to it can open it, and only you (its owner) can edit it. You can change the default access settings when you create an item (except for links and other files), or later, by editing it.

For a container (such as a folder or inbox), you can change the initial owner setting, which determines the default Edit list for its children. Therefore, any new item in that container has its Open list set to "Any member who can get to it" (as usual), while its Edit list is determined by the parent's initial owner setting.

Note: If you copy and paste an item, the copy preserves the Open list of the original item.

About hidden items

Some of the items you work with might contain classified information (for example, a salary report) that you want to make unavailable to everyone but a subset of eRoom members. If you own such items, you can restrict members' access rights to open them. For even greater confidentiality (for example, for corporate restructuring plans), you can hide items so that members who can't open them can't even see them. To those members, hidden items do not appear in the item box, the map, search results, notification emails, and so on.

If you can open any items that are hidden from other members, a separate area of the item box (or attachments area) called "Your Hidden Items" shows these items.

Note: There is no separate area for hidden items on the Meetings and Events page, in the recycle bin, or in search results.

Hidden items that you can open appear as usual in the map, in search results, in notification emails, and so forth, with the following exceptions:

In the size column of an item box in detailed view, item counts do not include hidden items inside the container.
In databases, change-log fields never show entries for changes made to attachments while they are hidden. Change-log entries recorded before the item was hidden are preserved, and they resume (or begin) once the item is unhidden.

To members without Open rights to hidden items, they also do not appear

in the list of items available as template items
as template items on the Create page
in routing-target dialogs

For members without Open rights to hidden items, "next unread" does not go to those items, and tasks in hidden databases as well as events in hidden calendars cannot be synchronized with Outlook.

Modifying your view of items

You can change how eRoom displays items in the item box.

To change your view of items:

In the command bar, click one of the following buttons:

-- displays items as large icons with name labels.

-- displays items in a list of small, named icons.

-- displays items in a detailed list of small icons with columns for name, modified date, owner, and size. In this detailed view you have access to all commands in the command bar.

In large icon view, small icon view, and detailed view, you can right-click icons to display the pop-up menu, and drag and drop items. In the detailed view, check boxes appear next to each item so you can select one or more items and use commands in the command bar.

To sort items in a detailed view:

With item details showing in the item box, click on a column heading to sort items by name, date modified, owner, or size.
Click the same heading again to reverse the sorting order from ascending to descending (or vice versa).

To set the default item view:

In the bottom right corner of the item box, click the save settings button ().

This saves your current view across browser (login) sessions, and also saves it as the default view of this item box for all members of the eRoom.

Note: You can only set the default view for an item box if you have edit rights to that page.

Using drag and drop in eRoom

You can drag and drop items from the map into an item box or attachment box, from an item or attachment box to the map, or from one place in the map to another. You can also drag and drop eRoom items into and out of the recycle bin.

The following table outlines eRoom's drag and drop conventions. Asterisks (*) indicate actions that require the plug-in. Items that can have attachments are notes, polls, discussion topics, database entries, project plan tasks, calendars, and calendar events.

Note: You cannot drop items into the "Hidden Items" area of the item box.

Drag	Drop	Action
eRoom folder(s).	Item box, folder, or an item's attachment box.	Moves if same eRoom. Copies if different eRoom.
	*Outside eRoom.	Creates folder(s), copies files and subdirectories.
eRoom file(s).	Item box, folder, or an item's attachment box.	Moves if same eRoom. Copies if different eRoom. Prompts to replace if name conflict.
	eRoom file.	Prompts to replace.
	*Outside eRoom.	Copies.
eRoom link(s).	Item box, folder, or an item's attachment box.	Moves if same eRoom. Copies if different eRoom.
	*Outside eRoom.	Creates URL shortcut.
*Files(s) from the desktop.	Item box, folder, or an item's attachment box.	Copies. Prompts to replace if name conflict.
	eRoom file.	Prompts to replace.
*Folder(s) from the desktop.	Item box, folder, or an item's attachment box.	Copies. Prompts to create file set if name conflict.
*URL shortcut from the desktop.	Item box, folder, or an item's attachment box.	Creates a link.

Note: You can only drag and drop a discussion topic into a discussion, a calendar event into a calendar, a database entry into a database, and a project plan task into a project plan.