The BSCW JMonitor applet collects and displays information about

• presence and availability of a subset of users of a BSCW server

The subset of users is defined by two criteria

• the users have the BSCW JMonitor applet running and connected to that server
• the users are listed in your address book.

Presence means that the user has opened a session on that server and the JMonitor applet is connected to that server.

Availability may be set to 'available' or 'away/busy' by the user to indicate that you may or should not try to directly contact the user.

• activities (events) in your workspaces

The activities that are reported are identical in scope (i.e., all your workspaces on the server) and organization (types of activities) to the daily workspace report (cf. section 4.2.5). The main advantage of using JMonitor is the near real-time alert to relevant events.

Note:

The JMonitor functionality is based on the principle of reciprocity: When your JMonitor Applet is running, all the users that you see as being 'online' can see that you are connected to the same BSCW server. Just as you can be informed about their activities, they can observe what you are doing.

Figure 5.2-1: JMonitor - user view

JMonitor provides two views for the presentation of user presence and activities. You may toggle between these two views using the respective tabs at the bottom of the applet window. The users tab will display the list of online co-workers, while the events tab will list events in your workspaces.