If the smallgroup module (kg) is installed, three authorization stages are also available for it, they are: Viewing (1), Editing (2), deletion and creating (3). For more information about the kg module see below.

"Allow this user to moderate group subscriptions for his groups" gives a user permission to moderate subscriptions to groups for which their login has assign rights (2).

Fine Grained User Permissions (Rows)

User permissions may be assigned per login to groups of data, so that e.g. a small group leader can be given permission to view the addresses of their small group members, or to even edit them. Another example is to allow a small group leader, who is also the leader of the tea and coffee team, to view the personal data of his small group members and also to edit the personal data of members of the tea and coffee team. However, he has no access to any other details of people in the database. To achieve this, filters must be created to show the columns the user has access to as follows:

1. Create a filter for the small group and save it as preset “sg1”

2. Create a filter for the coffee team and store it as preset "coffee team".

In the Admin module you can now edit the appropriate Login. In the People section, under “ALL” select 0, under “Level 1” select filter preset "sg1" and for the stage 2 the filter preset "coffee team". We have given the login no permissions by default (Selected “0” under “ALL”), but then given viewing rights to the people in the filter preset "sg1", and edit (But not delete) rights to the people in "coffee team".

The filter presets "sg1" and "coffee team" may now be removed if they will not be needed for filtering people. The permissions will still stay in place as above and are even updated when people are added to removed from “sg1” or “coffee team”. ”

Fine grained user permissions (Columns)

It is possible to define which columns of personal data a particular user may view or edit. To do this, create a preset column filter containing the columns which the user may view. The same, or another filter may be used to limit columns that may be edited. Next edit the relevant login using the Admin module. Under “People” select the appropriate column filter preset for the two stages (view, edit).

NB: To allow all people to be viewed, either set the global access right (Labelled ALL) to stage 1 or higher, or use an appropriate filter preset to make the required columns accessible. This also applies to stage 2 (Edit).

Families

kOOL may be used to group people into families. This makes it possible for example to send a mail merged letter to each individual or a single letter to the whole family. Each member of a family may be assigned a family role (Husband, wife or child). This enables the system to automatically calculate the number of children in a family. A further advantage of grouping people by families is that the address needs only to be changed once for the whole family, rather than once per person. Fields such as the address are stored once in the database for the whole family. They are marked with a family icon in the “edit person” screen. Therefore any change to one of these fields for one family member will also be made for every other member of the family.

Clicking on the plus sign next to the surname brings up the family options. The first option allows this person to be assigned to another family using the drop down list. If for example a child leaves home, "none" may be selected, to show the person no longer shares the family home. The “Add new” button may be used to create a new family after a wedding for example. The fields "Family Salutation" and "Override Surname" also appear. The first allows a family salutation for export to be defined. If it is left blank, "Family" is used for the salutation. Using this field a different salutation can be specified, e.g. "Mr and Mrs". Similarly "Family Surname" may be used to override the family surname. If it is blank, the surname of the family is used. If the members of the family have different surnames (And "Family Surname" is left blank), they are connected by hyphens. Using this field the family name could be overridden e.g. to "A. & B. Meier". The first name is left blank when a family is being exported.

In the person list, several people may be combined into a family using the button labelled “Add selected people to family”. The family fields of these people are overwritten to make them all the same, so if their addresses were different to start with some data may be lost. The family role can be assigned afterwards by editing the person individually, or by using the multiple row edit function for the "Family Role" column.

Filter

The list of people may be filtered. Each column may have its own filter rules, and these rules may be combined.

Possible filter rules are: Surname, first name, post code, county, country, Home phone, Work Phone, fax, email, Marital status, date of birth, etc.

If different filter rules are applied, these are linked by using the AND operator, i.e. a person is only shown if all filter rules match (see examples). This standard behaviour may can be changed using the “link” option.

If several filter rules are added against the same column, these are linked using the OR operator, because for example a person can not live in London AND Manchester. However the group filter, is controlled by the “link” option to select OR or AND, to link the group filters. This is because a person may be a member of more than one group.

The filter rules may be negated individually using the "Opposite" tick box.

Regular expressions may be used. The wildcard is * (Matches any number of any letters) Therefore "Ba*" matches "Baker" as well as "Bailey".

Other special characters include:

^ - Matches the beginning of a line

$ - Matches the end of a line

Thus “*on$” matches “Thompson” but not “Jones”

And “^th” matches “Thompson” but not “Smith”

Some simple examples

Everyone with the surname "Meier": Surname: Meier
Everyone whose post code begins with MK4, e.g. MK40 4DR or MK4 9ED: Post code: MK4*
People who do not have a mobile phone: Mobile: ""
People who do have a mobile phone: Mobile "", opposite

More complex examples

Everyone who has both mobile and email: Mobile: "", Opposite - email: "", Opposite
Everyone who is a small group leader: SG leader "", opposite (i.e. show everyone who has an entry in the SG leader column, indicating they are a small group leader.)

Filters and filter combinations can be stored as presets. These can be used again later and refined by adding further options to them.

It is also possible to save the displayed columns with the preset filter, by ticking the “Save Columns” box before saving the preset. The next time the preset is selected, the same columns are displayed again. When the column layout is stored with the filter, a “+” appears next to its name in the drop down “Load Preset” list.

A user with authorization stage 4 (moderator) may save filter presets for other users. Click on the small downward arrow beside the floppy disc “Save” icon to display the list of users. Select the users for whom this preset should be saved for in addition to the current user. These preset filters are stored as copies, i.e. any user deleting the preset filter will only delete their own copy, everyone else keeps theirs.

To save cluttering the screen, individual filters may be removed from the list. To do this, use the layout screen in the admin module. Scroll down to the people filter section and add or remove columns from the list, If this is done, the line: "- - more - - " appears under the list. Clicking it will show the hidden filters again. By hiding the less frequently used filters, the more frequently used ones can be found more easily.

Special filters

Rota: Use this filter to select an event and get a list of all people scheduled for service during this event.
Filter Preset: Apply one of your saved filter presets as a single filter. This can be useful if you need to combine filters in a way it would not be possible with just one filter.
SG day, SG region, SG type: Apply these filters to display all people being in a smallgroup meeting on the given day, in the given region or being of the given type.

Advanced sorting

Each column header in the list view contains two arrow icons which let you sort your addresses by this column, ascending and descending. Sometimes it might be helpful to not only sort by one column but by two or more. This can be done using advanced sorting. Click the "advanced sorting" link above the address list. Two select boxes will appear. The first displays the column by which the details are currently being sorted. To add a second sorting column, simply select the desired column in the second box. Choose between ascending and descending sorting mode for each column using the corresponding icon to the right of the select box. It is possible to sort by as many columns as required.

You may choose one of the "normal" personal data columns or one of the currently displayed group columns as sorting columns.

Views

Two views of personal data are available:

- Person list: A compact list. The columns shown can be selected.

- Address list: Overview of the most important address fields, which can be copied and pasted, for example to address letters or envelopes. Also in this view next to each name and address is an icon, with which you can import a Vcard into your address book (e.g. in Outlook). Lastly there is an icon to show the address on a map using map.search.ch.

Individual columns may be hidden (Or shown) in the person list. The filter rules are not affected, they are still applied even if the column is not shown. These views can be stored in preset filters.

The person list may be sorted by any column in ascending or descending order.

The birthday list shows upcoming birthdays. The time window over which the birthdays are shown, i.e. if the birthday occurs between 5 days ago and 20 days in the future for example, can be configured in the admin module.

Sorting Columns

The sequence of the columns can be arranged automatically or manually. To change the mode use the “Sort Columns” tick box. If the box is not ticked, new columns are always added to the right. The double arrows at the bottom of each column may be used to move the column left or right. The order will be saved if the column list is saved in a preset.

If “Sort Columns” is ticked, the columns are automatically arranged in the same order as they appear in the column submenu.

My list

Each kOOL user who has permission to view people, has their own list of people at their disposal called “My List”. An arbitrary list of people who can not easily be grouped together by use of filters, may be added to this list and shown together. This list can be used for example to export the peoples data, or to assign them to a team. The people are found individually and added to “My list” one by one using “Add Selected” under the “My List” box.

If the “List” link under “My List” is clicked, the people are listed. Actions may be done on this list, e.g. send an email to everyone in the list. People may be removed individually or in groups from the list.

In some places in kOOL you'll find the possibility to store people in "My List" or the import them out of "My List". E.g. in newsletters or as recipients of fileshare files.

Actions

The selected people can be exported by means of actions. The following actions are available:

Excel Spreadsheet: This can be used to do for example a mail merge.
Mass Email: The email addresses of the selected people appear as an email, so that an email can be sent straight away, or the list of email addresses may be copied and pasted rather than having to copy them all individually. People who have no email address in their personal data will be listed, and an excel file is created with their details.
Labels: A PDF is created suitable for printing address labels. There is more information on this in the next section.
SMS: If the personal data contains a valid mobile number, an SMS with a text of up to 160 characters can be sent to the mobile numbers. For more information, see the Send SMS section.
PDF: This option allows you to create PDF files. Find out more about the possibilities and settings further down.

The "rows" drop down box is used to select which person or families are to be exported. The following options are available:

Filtered (people): Everyone in the current list (i.e. any filter applies) are exported individually, i.e. whether or not they are in a family makes no difference.
Filtered (families): Everyone in the current list (i.e. any filter applies) are exported as families if they belong to one. The family salutation and "Address line 1", are used if they are defined. Otherwise the salutation "family" is used, and the first names of parents are used as the first name. Families are only exported once, even if several members are in the list. The normal data fields are used for people who are not in a family.
Filtered (fam if 2+): If two or more members of one family are part of the current list of people they will be exported as a family. If only one member is found or if there is no family defined for a person, these will be exported as is.
Selected: All selected people/families are exported. In order to select an individual person, tick the first tick box column of the list to export. To export a family, tick the box in the second column, the family column, to select the whole family.
Selected (families): All selected individuals are exported. The family data is used if the individual is a family member. If the individual is not in a family their own data is used.
Selected (fam if 2+): Selected individuals are exported as families if two or more members of the family are in the current list.

Use the "columns" drop down box to define which personal data columns should be exported to Excel or labels. For example, a mail merge letter will needs address data but not small group or telephone data to be exported. The following options are available:

All: All columns for the selected people are exported. This will result in a large file.
Shown: The columns shown in the list are exported.
Shown + parents' data: This option adds columns to children's records which contain information about their parents, e.g. the mobile number.
"Preset filter": The options in quotation marks stand for the preset filters of that name, which were saved using the people module. Thus it is very easy to have the correct data for a mail merge or printing labels available. It is advisable to store preset column filters for the frequently used exports so that they can be selected and ease creation of the required data.

Printing Labels

In order to print peoples addresses as labels, use the action "labels" to create a pdf file, which contains the data which can be printed. This makes it possible to, for example, print address labels. There are many other possibilities, e.g. name plates for a dinner etc. The columns selected in the drop down box "columns" are printed. For an address label the following columns would have to be selected; title, forename, surname, address, address line 2, Town/city, post code. To use “selected” these columns would need to be in the list view. Alternatively a preset column filter called "labels" would save arranging the columns every time you wish to print labels. Instead, simply select "labels" in the drop down box. Once the labels button is pressed, the following options are displayed:

Preset: The preset for the label size must be selected. These presets should be defined in the Admin module (see the Admin module documentation for more info)
First label: The position of the first label to be printed. Counting starts on the left of the first line and goes to the right, then the next line and so on. This is useful when a sheet of labels has been partly used.
Print Border: Borders may be printed or not. If the sheets do not contain individual labels these may be used to guide cutting.
Fill pages: With this option ticked the whole sheet of labels is beeing filled with the selected addresses. If e.g. only three addresses are being printed, they will be repeated to fill the whole sheet.
Field Separator: After each field (address, forename, place etc.) it is possible to print a new line, a blank line, a space, or nothing at all. E.g. if first name and surname need to be on the same line, a space may be selected as a field separator after the forename. To put the address on the next line, newline may be selected as the field separator after the surname.

Send SMS

It is possible to a text message to people's mobile phones. To do this: select the people to receive the SMS from the people list in kOOL. Next select the SMS action by clicking on the mobile phone icon. Two lists of people appear. The ones who have valid phone numbers appear first under "Recipients". Next those people who have no mobile number, or the number defined is invalid are listed. This list of people with invalid numbers may be downloaded in a spreadsheet, added to the "My list" list, or may overwrite "My list", by clicking the appropriate link. Additional recipients can be added manually. The text message is written in the text box, a maximum of 160 characters can be used. The message is sent using the "Send" button. The cost per recipient will vary depending on network and location. The available SMS Credit is shown under "Account balance".

Create a PDF list

Select the desired pdf layout from the select box. The available layouts can be managed in the admin module. Find out more about them in documentation of the admin module.

After selecting a layout the following options will appear:

Filter: The chosen filter preset defines the addresses to be exported. If the selected pdf layout already holds a filter preset this one will be selected by default "[Using Preset]". You may also apply the currently used filter by selecting "[Current Filter]". Or you may select one of your stored filter presets by their name.
Columns: Here you may select the columns to be printed for each address. If the selected pdf layout already holds a column preset it will be used as a default "[Using Preset]". By selecting the option "[Current Columns]" the currently visible columns will be used. Alternatively you may select one of your stored column presets.
Include Group Datafields: By ticking this option the group datafields of selected groups will be exported as separate columns.
Header and Footer: Use any text for the header and footer or use some of the described substitution variables. E.g. [[PageNumber]] will be replaced with the current page number.

Import Addresses

In the people Submenu there is an "import" option for users with authorization stage 4. This allows the import of address data from external sources. Import from a CSV or a vCard file is possible. You can create a CSV file e.g. from an Excel spreadsheet, which should be saved as a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file. The import is made by 3 steps:

1. Select the type of file containing your address data

2. (CSV) select the columns in the CSV file in their correct order, so that the data can be imported into the correct fields of the kOOL database. Select the file using the "Browse" button. The field and text separator should be defined in their relevant fields. The field separator stands between each column and the text separator surrounds the text of an individual column. If the first line of your CSV file contains column headings, they may be excluded from the import by ticking the “Ignore first line” box.

2. (vCard) The only option here is to select the vCard file to import. Both types of vCards are allowed, i.e. those with a single contact in, or those with several.

3. If the file and the data within it were verified, the first 5 records are displayed. If this looks OK the addresses may be assigned to a group and imported.

Editing People

If the permissions allow editing, an edit icon will appear in the second column of the person list. It does not appear in the address list view, only the person list view. Click on it to open the editing screen for the person. All personal data appears in the screen, no matter which columns were shown in the list screen.

Editing a single column for several people is also possible. Select the people to be edited using the tick box on the left, and click the “Edit this column for all selected rows” icon, which appears at the bottom of each column. Clicking on the tick box at the top or bottom of the selection column reverses the selection, so if none are selected, all the rows on the screen can be selected by clicking this tick box.

Creating a new person

New people may be created by selecting “add person" from the people submenu to bring up the create person screen. This should be filled in as required. Fields may be left blank if desired.

Fast Filter

In order to quickly search for people, first name and/or surname can be provided for the Fast Filter. The people are filtered according to these criteria and matching ones are listed.

The tick box "Deleted" shows people who have been deleted. These were removed by clicking on the dustbin icon, This marks them as deleted, but does not remove them from the database. Clicking delete again on any row which is already marked as deleted will permanently remove it from the database.

The tick box "Show hidden" is only available if the general setting for displaying hidden people is set to "Let user decide". Then you may switch between displaying the hidden addresses or hiding them in the current list display.

The date selector labelled "show old version" allows personal data to be displayed as they where at a time in the past. See more below under "Versioning".

Version history

When a person's record is changed, the old version is saved. To view previous versions, e.g. to find what address someone had on a particular date in the past, use the date field in the fast filter and click OK. This feature is available to users who have edit rights for all people. You can apply filters to this old version as usual and you may also export them.

The history for a persons record can be displayed by clicking the clock symbol. Click the green "roll back" arrow to undo all changes to the record up to and including the selected change.

Moderating Changes

Keeping the personal data up to date is a time consuming task. To reduce this work, kOOL allows users to request address changes from the front module. These changes must then be accepted by a moderator, (a Login with moderator rights for the people module). Anyone can request changes but they must be authorised before they are actually applied.

The “Changes()” entry appears in the “people” submenu if the user has sufficient permissions. If there are one or more changes, this becomes a link to a screen listing them. They may be viewed and, if necessary, corrected before accepting them. The changes may also be completely rejected.

Administrative tasks

Assign a login to a person: A user with moderator rights can assign a person to a login name. This populates the login with personal data, which are used within kOOL.
Assign or remove a person from a team: With an authorization stage of 3 (edit) people may be assigned or removed from teams in the Rota module.
Assign or remove team leader: With an authorization stage of 4 (moderator) the user may assign or remove team leaders. A team may have several leaders. (More about this in the documentation for the Rota module)

Smallgroup Module (KG)

Small group administration is done in its own module, which is a sub-module of the people module. Permission to use the module can be assigned per user. The "small group" submenu can be used to show all small groups (List Groups), or create a new small group. The list view of the small groups is identical to all other list view in kOOL and should be easy to understand.

A small group's name need not have anything do with the small group leader. For example small groups may be called "blue", "yellow" etc. if so desired. The leader assigned to a small group, appears in the list view in parentheses after the small group's name. Likewise the number of participants can be shown in the list. This is calculated from the number of people assigned to the group.

To assign a leader to a small group: First edit the personal data of the leader. Select the small group from the list, which this person is to lead. A person can lead several small groups, and a small group may have several leaders. This may be done for several leaders at once using the multi column edit function.

To assign a person to a small group: This is similar to assigning a small group leader. In the “Edit person” screen, the small group of which the person is to be a member may be selected using the drop down box.

Accessing peoples data from Outlook/Thunderbird

The address, telephone and email address data for the people in the kOOL database are stored in an LDAP directory, or other listing service. Many Email programs e.g. Outlook Express or Thunderbird can use these services for address books. The personal data may only be accessed if the user has the correct permission, i.e. a user needs to log in to the listing service with their kOOL Login. To use the listing service from Outlook, follow these instructions:

Note: These instructions are for Outlook XP. Other versions will be slightly different.
From the menu bar in Outlook click on Tools->Email Accounts.
Select "Add a new directory or address book" and click next.
Select "Internet Directory Service (LDAP)" and click next.
Type the hostname of the kOOL LDAP server in the box, and tick "This server requires me to log on".
The username and password fields appear.
The user name will be: "cn=LOGIN,ou=login,ou=kOOL_demo,dc=Ihr.LDAP.Server,dc=com". LOGIN should be replaced by the user's kOOL login name. Replace kOOL_demo etc. with whatever is defined in config/ko config.inc.
The password is the users kOOL password
Click "More Settings"
Click OK on the "Add email account" alert.
Change "Display Name" if desired. Click on the "Search" tab.
In the "Search Base" field, enter the search base: "ou=kOOL_demo,dc=Ihr.LDAPServer,dc=com". As above, the exact name depends on what is set up in the configuration.
Click OK to return to the "Directory Service (Ldap) settings" screen.
Click Next.
Click Finish on the "Congratulations" screen.
As the alert said, Outlook needs to be restarted here so the new address book shows up in the following steps. Select File->Exit to close, and then start Outlook up again.
From the main outlook window, select Tools->Address Book to bring up the address book.
The newly added address book should show up under the "Show names from" heading. Select it from the drop down list.
Type something in the "Type name or Select from List"
It can take a while for the names to appear the first time. Try tools->find, put "a" in the "Display name" field, select the "Contains" option, and click OK. Results should now be displayed.

To use the listing service from Thunderbird, use the following instructions.

From the main thunderbird window select Tools-> Address book to bring up the address book.
From the File menu select New->LDAP Directory
Enter the following data into the dialogue box:
Name: KOOL addresses
Hostname: The LDAP server name.
Base DN: ou=kOOL_demo,dc=Your.LDAP.Server,dc=com
Port number: 389 (standard)
Bind cn=LOGIN,ou=login,ou=kOOL_demo,dc=Your.LDAP.Server.dc=com
("kOOL_demo" should be replaced with the correct value, which is defined in config/ko-config.inc. "LOGIN" must be replaced by the users kOOL Login name.)
The address list on the left should now contain the "kOOL addresses" entry which was created above.
In the right hand side of the toolbar is a search box. Enter a name (Or a search term) in it.
A password prompt may appear. The user simply enters their own kOOL password, and clicks OK. Thunderbird may be instructed to save the password at this stage if required.
Close the address book.
The following steps will enable address autocompletion for email addresses from the kOOL LDAP server.
From the menu select Edit->Settings
In the dialogue box that appears, select the Composition tab.
Now select the "Addressing" tab which appears below.
Tick "Directory Server" and select "kOOL addresses" as created above.
Now create a new email, and start typing a name in the "To:" field. If it matches a (single) name in the kOOL LDAP directory, it will autocomplete.