MDS Teams Management Tools

Introduction

MDS teams are used for MDS authentication and as mailing lists. The web based tools described below are used to create and manage MDS teams.

Location of the tools

The MDS teams management tools is located at:
https://mdsadmin.monash.edu.au/cgi-bin/admin/teams/index.pl

When asked to login, use your Authcate login and password.

Access restrictions

To use this tool you must:

• login using a valid staff Authcate account.
• connect from a machine that is registered on the Monash network (130.194.*)

Creating a MDS team

Enter a name and description for the team. Both the name and the description are compulsory fields, an error message will be given if you leave any of these blank.

Invalid characters in team name and description

Certain characters are not allowed in the name and description fields. Th only characters allowed in the team name and description are:

• letters (a-z and A-Z)
• numbers (0-9)
• dot/fullstop
• hyphen
• space
• underscore

If you attempt to create a team name or description with any other characters other than the above, you will be asked to try again.

Disallowed team names

Team names containing 'Postmaster' (as one word), 'Directory Manager' and 'Manager of the Directory' are forbidden, whether they are in upper or lower case.

Select the type of team to be created

There are four possible team types:

• public: membership is maintained manually and is publicly viewable via MDS search tools.
• private: membership is maintained manually and is not viewable by anonymous users of MDS search tools.
• filter-based: a directory filter will 'control' who is a member. Filter-based lists can only be created by ITS staff. If you require a filter-based list then contact the Service Desk.
• self-subscribe: users (including external) can subscribe and unsubscribe themselves.

Creating the team

Click on the 'Create New Team Button' to create the team.

If the team is successfully created, you will be able to edit the team by clicking on the HTML link near the bottom of the page.

Creating a MDS team for mailing list

If you wish for a MDS team to be made into a mailing list, you will need to setup the mail properties.

First, have your local postmaster create a valid email address for this list. The email address should be in the following format:

listname@department.monash.edu

The email address must be a valid Monash email domain.

If an email address is specified, then it is compulsory to define the email address where error messages are sent to, if any.

Note: The preferred format for mailing list names is listname-l. By adding the "-l" to the name, it ensures that it does not conflict with an existing username.

A MDS team needs to have an email address defined for it, for the group to be able to work as a member of another mailing list.

Listing teams which you own

To find the lists which you are an owner of, go to:

https://mdsadmin.monash.edu.au/cgi-bin/admin/teams/dosearch.pl

This will only return a list of teams which are explictly owned by you.

To change the properties of any of these teams, click on the name of the team you wish to edit.

Listing all teams which you own through membership in other teams

Enter the asterisk character (*) in the text box labelled 'Find group' near the end of the page. Click the 'Find' button.

This will list all MDS teams which you own, as well as other teams that you "own" through being a member of other teams.

Listing specific teams which you own through membership in other teams

In the text box labelled 'Find group', enter the name of the team you wish to find. If you know part of the team name, you can use the asterisk character as a wildcard: eg: team*.
Click the 'Find' button.

This will list the MDS team or teams which fit your search criteria which you have ownership rights to. This means that even if you enter a team name which exists in the database, where you are not an owner, the team will not appear on this list.

Changing properties of a team

You can change the following properties with the MDS Teams Tools:

• Team Name
• Team Description
• Team Members
• Team Owners
• Mail Properties

Once changes have been made, click 'Save Changes'.

Team members or owners

To add or remove team members from the team, click the 'Edit' button below the 'Group Members' label.

To add or remove team owners from the team, click the 'Edit' button below the 'Owners' label.

Both these functions work identically. Upon loading the editing page, a current list of owners or members of the group are shown in a list box on the right of the page.

Finding members or owners

In order to add members or owners to the team, you have to do a search so that the program can verify these users actually exist.

To do so, type the name of the person or team you wish to find, and click the 'Find' button. Please ensure the appropriate keyword type is selected:

• people - to find member/owner by name
• uid - to find member/owner by username
• teams - to find teams to be added as member/owner

Adding members or owners

You can add single or multiple users to the current list.

After you've done a 'Find' on a keyword, select one or more users from the list-box returned by the search results.

(Using the 'shift' key in conjunction with the mouse allows you to select multiple items which are adjacent to each other in the list.
Using the 'ctrl' key in conjunction with the mouse allows you to select multiple items anywhere in the list.)

Click the 'Add' button to add your selection to the current list.

Click the 'Save Changes' button to confirm these changes; simply clicking the 'Add' button does not add these new items to the team. Alternatively, click 'Cancel' to discard the changes.

Deleting members or owners

You can delete single or multiple users from the current list.

Select one or more users from the list-box labelled 'Current List'.

(Using the 'shift' key in conjunction with the mouse allows you to select multiple items which are adjacent to each other in the list.
Using the 'ctrl' key in conjunction with the mouse allows you to select multiple items anywhere in the list.)

Click the 'Delete Selected' button to remove these users.

Click the 'Save Changes' button to confirm these changes; simply clicking the 'Delete Selected' button does not remove these users from the team.

If any of the users you have chosen to delete have been freshly added (ie you have not clicked the 'Save Changes' button after adding and before deleting them), these users will be ignored and are treated as if they have never been added.

Alternatively, click 'Cancel' to discard the changes.

Deleting a team

Follow the steps to "list the teams which you own" (above) and click on the team name that you want to edit. This will bring you to 'Editing team properties' page.

Click on 'Delete Group' at the base of the page to delete the team. A confirmation message should report success or failure of this operation.