About chat rooms Public chat rooms Transcripts Public chat rooms A public chat room is an online conversation among users who are currently connected to a FirstClass server with access to a particular chat room. Once the a public chat room is created, it works just like a private instant messaging session. Public chat rooms are set up and maintained by the administrator or those who have the "Create chat rooms" privilege set on the group privileges or user information form. Public chat rooms usually pertain to a specific topic. You might want to add public chat rooms for several topics. To organize the chat rooms, create a "chat rooms" folder inside the General Conferences folder. To enter a public chat room, double-click the associated icon. In FirstClass, each public chat room has an icon that looks like this: A red balloon beside the public chat room icon indicates that one or more people are currently participating in the online discussion. A participant in a chat room can invite any other user to join the session, the same way as in a private instant messaging session. The invited party does not need to have access to the conference where the public chat room is located to accept an invitation, but this person does need the "Join public chat" privilege. Transcripts Transcripts of the public instant messaging session can be saved in a conference or Mailbox. Only the conference moderator can enable the transcript. Once the session transcript has been saved, it can be accessed by any user who has permission to open objects in the container where the transcript is located, regardless of whether or not the user has the "Join public chat" privilege. Top For more information Setting up public chat rooms