Kundesenteret for students at NTNU

The purpose of Kundesenter

Kundesenteret is a portal for administration of groups, email lists and student organizations at NTNU. At the portal you will find applications for creating a group, email lists, extending the disk quota for groups area and general group administration.

What is a group?

A group can be some students wanting to cooperate or a larger student organization. You can create email lists for the group. This makes it easy to share information and keep the groupmembers updated. The group is assigned a home area with a disk quota. Members of the group can use this area to share files. It is also possible to create a webpage for the group on this area. This is very useful for project groups and other cooperative tasks.

Groups are assigned an expiration date. Regular groups need to apply for renewal every semester. Groups that are not renewed will be deleted. All members in the same group gets equal rights. This means that the members you invite can also remove you from the group. Do not add users you do not trust.

Everybody with a valid user at NTNU can create a group.

What is a mailing list?

A mailing list is an easy way to send email to the other members of the group. Other people interested in receiving emails from the group can either join or be added to the mailing list. The administrator of the list decides who can join the list. When someone sends an email to the mailing list, all the members in the mailing list will receive the email.

You can also create a personal email list assigned to your user, without having a group. In this case will the name of the email list consist of your username followed by a custom word.

A valid personal email list for the user nordmann would look like this:

• nordmann-info@list.stud.ntnu.no

It is also possible to create an email list assigned to a group. In this case, the name of the email list will consist of the groupname followed by a custom word. The group can also have an email list with only the group name.

Here follows some examples of valid email lists for the group examplegroup:

• examplegroup@list.stud.ntnu.no
• examplegroup-information@list.stud.ntnu.no

Groups and group applications

There are four types of groups:

1. Student Organization (Studorg)
2. Project
3. Personal
4. Staff

Student organization (Studorg)

Rules and regulations for creating a student organization group can be read at the article about Rules for student organizations.

Student organizations are larger groups above 15 people with duration for a longer period of time. An example of a student organization is a fraternity or a club in affiliation with NTNU.

Project

Project groups are meant for projects with three or more people who wants to share files for a certain period of time, normally 6 months. The disk quota is larger than normal. If you want to keep the project group for a longer period, please give the reason in the application.

Personal

A personal group consists of 2 or 3 people who want to share files for a short period of time, typically 2-3 months, and the disk quota is small.

Staff

This type of group is intended for employees at NTNU or groups/projects financed by NTNU. Special agreements is to be made with NTNU IT before the group is accepted. Contact Orakeltjenesten for more information.

Group application

Step 1:

When you have decided on which type of group you want to create, click on the link groups and group mailing lists.

Step 2:

Trykk på knappen new group for å lage en søknad.

Step 3: You will get a form you need to fill out. When you are done with the application, click the button "apply" to send it. The application will be evaluated and you will get a response on the email connected to your user.

Name is the short name of your group, this has to be between 9 and 255 characters long. The name has to start with a letter and can contain small letters(a-z), numbers(0-9) and underscore (_).

Title is the full name of your group. This name is going to be used everywhere the group is referred. An example is "The good students at A423" or "Specializatiton project: Interruption management in ESCOS 2010".

Type is what type of group you want to create. You choose between the four types. Be sure to select a type that represents what you are going to use the group for.

Category is only used by student organizations. Here you can choose which category the organization is related.

Description is a description of the group. Try to explain why the group shall be accepted. If the group is a student organization, remember to explain what kind of students will be the target group.

It is important to write a good and descriptive text. Explain what the group is going to do and what kind of files are going to be stored. A bad description is a major reason for why groups are not accepted. Here follows some examples of good and bad descriptions.

Good descriptions:

• We are some students from 5. year that are going to write a project. We feel that it would be helpful with a grouparea where we can share documents. The area shall be used for storing and sharing raw data.
• Cooperation on project about pavement in the topic ASF4300. Wishes expiration date in september 2011. Storing textdocuments.

Bad descriptions:

• can i have a large disk quota for my movies?
• i want a group about raccoons

Group catalogue

The group catalogue is available over the local network at NTNU, or by using VPN from outside NTNUs network.

For more information about how to connect to the area, check out the articles for Windows, Mac OS X or Linux

The area is also available by using SSH to login.stud.ntnu.no and navigate to the path mentioned under UNIX.

The group catalogue is available on the following paths:

• UNIX:
• /home/groups/group_name
• /home/groups/group_name/public_html

• Windows:
• \\sambaad.stud.ntnu.no\groups\group_name
• \\sambaad.stud.ntnu.no\groupswww\group_name

Membership administration

After the group has been approved by us you may want to add members to the group. You can only add users registered at NTNUs computer systems to the group.

To add people to the group, go to edit from the group administrationpage.

Write the username for a wanted member in the textfield marked with new member. Click on the button marked add member. Users you add will have the same privileges as you have. Do not add members you do not know who are.

If you want to delete a member, this is possible by clicking delete next to the username.

Application for increased disk quota and new expiration date

To apply for increased disk quota, press the button apply for more diskspace in group administration.

Choose amount and give a good reason for why you need the extension.

You can also apply for a new expiration date by choosing new expiry date and give a good reason for the change. Default extension is 6 months for project groups and 1 year for student organizations.

Send the application by clicking save

Create web page for the group

It is possible to create a web page for the group, so that it can be accessed from http://org.ntnu.no/gruppenavn. By using this way, it is also possible to share pictures and documents with the rest of the world.

This is possible to enable and disable by going to the same place where you can add and remove members, from the administration panel.

Next to the alternative public_html, you can choose yes to enable web-access, or no to disable this. On the group area, a folder named public_html exists. Documents that are put here will be available from the internet, as long as the filepermissions are correct. Do not put files you want to keep private in this folder.

The webpages put here can be of HTML and PHP. JSP will not work here, but can be placed on your private webpgave at folk.ntnu.no.

You can read more about permissions and creation of webpages here.

Warning:

The folder public_html is by default enabled when you create a new group. Remember to turn this option off if you do not want to let files in this folder be shared with the public. Files outside this folder will still be accessible for groupmembers by using the local network.

Create a personal or group email list

The email lists are managed by an application named Mailman. Groups can make as many email lists that is required. This is done on the administrationpage for the group.

By clicking on add list without text in the field, an email list with only the groupname is created. In addition, it is possible to make email lists with a custom word behind, by filling out the text field. There is also a button used for administering the email list. This can be found next to the email list. The one who press this button will get an email with an admin password for Mailman.