Understanding the OCS

This document is an introduction to the Online Conference Service (OCS).In addition to the basic explanation of the OCS in its interface and structure, it contains a collection of suggestions whereand how you can get information about the OCS.

Use this overview to get to know the features of the OCS as well as the central pages serving as a comprehensive en-try point.

Contents1 OCS Layout & Interface 2

1.1 Main Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.2 Header . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31.3 Footer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

2 Philosophy of the OCS 5

3 Navigation & Structure 83.1 Basic Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83.2 Breadcrumbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

4 Actions & Interaction 114.1 Action Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114.2 Action Overview Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124.3 Actions in Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

5 Supportive Tools 145.1 Info Button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145.2 Howtos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165.3 OCS User Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

6 User Profile & Settings 196.1 Displayed Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196.2 Personal Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226.3 Coordinating Messages and Invitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

7 Special Functions & Features 247.1 Sort by Attribute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247.2 Filter Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257.3 Searching for a Paper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267.4 Multi Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277.5 Bundled View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

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1 OCS Layout & Interface

In this chapter, an overview to the interface of the OCS will be given in short.

The layout of an OCS page is separated into three major components:

• the main window – container for the content of a page

• the header – compilation of tabs for the currently most important pages

• the footer – breadcrumbs and links to help pages

1.1 Main Window

Note:Whenever a section of this documentation or a howto documentrefers to content that is not explicitly described as “in the footer” or“in the header”, it will be situated in the main window.

The most significant component of the layout is the main window. It includes the content of an OCS page. For examplethe “OCS Welcome” page as seen in the introducing image of this chapter offers a choice of actions, such as navigatingto the “Conference List” and other pages of interest.

On other pages like the “Paper List” page it shows a compact table with information regarding the submitted papers ofthe current conference.

For detailed information to a specific page consult the Info Button in the upper right or an according howto.

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In order to maintain orientation, the main window offers the so called Breadcrumbs. Those appear in the upper left corner,as illustrated in the image above.

1.2 Header

The header provides quick access to the most significant actions and sites. The appearance of the header changes basedon:

• the currently visited OCS page

• the conference status if the visited page belongs to a conference

• your user roles (and hence if you are logged in)

The header represents important pages as tabs. If the current page is a subpage of one of these, the parent page will behighlighted.

The image above depicts the header of the “Conference list”. As you see, no page that is related to a conference is shownbecause the “Conference list” is not a subpage of a specific conference.

This example illustrates the header of a “Conference Home” page in which the current user is PC Member. The confer-ence is in Setup Mode and therefore offers only the basic pages that are related to a conference.

The header of a conference being, e.g., in the Submission Phase also contains the Submit page.

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1.3 Footer

The footer contains breadcrumbs similar to the main window, making it very easy to navigate through the OCS pages. Inaddition to that, it includes direct links to your User profile, the Howtos page, the User Guide and the “Imprint” alignedto the right. The footer always displays the three links.

This footer belongs to the “Paper List” of a conference. As the user is currently logged in, the footer also contains a linkto the user profile as well as breadcrumbs. The breadcrumbs will be elucidated in the next chapter, where you can alsofind more information on how the system is structured.

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2 Philosophy of the OCS

The basic principle of the OCS is to offer users free choice in which way they want to execute certain workflows whilekeeping every possible way simple and transparent.

Starting with the navigation, you have several alternatives to reach the page you need. Most pages can be accessed viatabs in the header as well as by clicking the corresponding icon in the main window.

The OCS does not limit the workflow to one possibility but offers you diverse ways, letting you decide what fits you best.A good example of the free workflow principle is the assignment, which associates papers and reviewers. You decide

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whether you like to assign a paper to reviewers or assign a reviewer to papers.

You can make use of both ways at once and decide on the amount of users and papers, which workflow is the optimalchoice.

The OCS also provides a general “Manage assignments” page, that offers the function to automatically assigning re-viewers to papers, based on their bidding status. Alternatives like this are always shown in a “See also” section in themain window.

If a step can be performed in an alternate way, this possibility is proposed in a “See also” section.

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In addition to the offer of a free workflow, the OCS provides a great amount of tools and functions to make your workeasier. A collection of those tools can be found in the chapter Special Functions of the OCS.

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3 Navigation & Structure

This section will explain the structure of the OCS and how you can navigate.

3.1 Basic Structure

In order to help you understanding the concept of the OCS user interface, the following image includes an extract of itsstructure starting from the start page of the OCS in a structured overview.

The “OCS Welcome” is the root page of the OCS and provides easy navigation to all pages of interest. Pages that can bedirectly accessed from here are:

• the User Guide, a manual that describes the OCS in detail

• the Howtos, single-step tutorials that describe seperate tasks with screenshots

• the User Profile which gives information about the account you are currently logged in with

• the “Conference list”

The “Conference list” is a list that contains all conferences and umbrella conferences. An umbrella conference aggre-gates a set of tracks, while a track is similar to a conference. Details on the differences between conferences and umbrellaconference tracks can be found in the User Guide.

A conference contains:

• the “Conference Details” which is the profile of the conference and contains its phase deadlines and other data,like the description

• the conferences’ “Discussion” page on which you can communicate with the program committee

• the “Paper List” with all papers that have been submitted including the actions that can be performed

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Umbrella conferences are a specific type of conferences that have no deadlines or papers. Anyway, umbrella conferencehave a description and a PC Chair as well as a “Discussion” page. Their function as a bundle of conferences makes iteasy to get an overview of all tracks and their papers.

The “Paper List” of an umbrella conference is a list of all papers from its tracks. All other functions are the same as inthe “Paper List” of a conferenc, for example viewing the details of a paper.

Each track in the “Track List” of an umbrella conference is a conference with the same function and pages with the onlydifference that tracks have an additional superpage: the “Track list” of the umbrella conference.

3.2 Breadcrumbs

The breadcrumbs is a tool for navigation. It is composed of links representing the hierarchy of the currently viewed page.It can be found on the left side on top of every OCS page and in the footer, as shown in the following image.

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Each link of the breadcrumbs refers to an OCS page. According to the hierarchy introduced in the previous section, thebreadcrumbs contains all pages that are on upper levels of the hierarchy and connected in the diagram. It can be read fromright to left, starting with your current page and going up to the “OCS Welcome” page, which is the root page of the OCS.

This is a “Paper Details” page, the links in the breadcrumbs are composed of the paper title as last item, as well asthe links to the “Paper List”, which contains the paper. The “Paper List” is part of a conference, in this case the con-ference EITC. Click on the conference name to get to the “Conference Profile”. Since every conference is part of the“Conference list”, this link is also available in the breadcrumbs. The first element is the root page, the “OCS Welcome”page.

Click any of the links in the breadcrumbs and you will be directed to the related page. Have a look at the previous chapterfor details on the hierarchy of OCS pages.

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4 Actions & Interaction

Every OCS page offers actions to the user. These actions can be categorized into four groups, the so called action types:

• ( ) “view” – for actions that obtain information, e.g. download a paper document or view a list

• ( ) “create” – for actions that create new data, e.g. writing a e-mail, submitting a abstract or adding users to aconference committee

• ( ) “edit” – for actions that manipulate data or interact with the OCS, e.g. changing conference settings, editingyour user data or changing your password

• ( ) “delete” – for actions that remove data, e.g. deleting a paper, revoking invitations or removing a discussionentry

Actions are presented in association to one of the four action types.

4.1 Action Bar

The action bar contains the four types of actions.

This is an action bar on a detail page, such as “Conference Home” or “Paper details”. The four icons in the action barare action type symbols and represent the action types.

Each action type symbol is grey unless you hover over it. Hovering over an action type symbol will color it and displayall available actions of the corresponding action type. Every action type containing at least one action has a grey arrow-symbol ( ) to indicate that it can be expanded.

This action bar contains actions of the action type “view” and “create”. The lack of an arrow symbol indicates, that thereare no actions of the action types “edit” and “delete”.

Clicking on one of the actions in the expanded bar will perform the action. Hovering over one of the actions shows itsname.

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4.2 Action Overview Page

Clicking on one of the action type symbols will take you to an overview page for all available actions of that action type.This does not work for action types that do not contain at least action.

This overview page displays every available action included in the currently viewed action type, as well as a short sum-mary of their effects. You can switch your view to an overview of another action type by clicking either the action typesymbol or the arrow-symbol ( ) .

Clicking on any action will perform the action. The effect is the same as clicking an action of the action bar right away.

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4.3 Actions in Lists

OCS pages which contain lists, for example the “Conference list” or – as in this example – the “Paper list”, use actionbars for the following three different purposes:

1. for multi actions2. for single actions3. for global actions

They differ in their scope of responsibilities:

Multi ActionsMulti actions affect multiple table rows, e.g. setting the bidding status for multiple papers or viewing the details ofseveral papers at once. Refer to the chapter Multi Actions for more information.

Single ActionsThese actions affect only one table row, e.g. download the document of a specific paper.

Global ActionsGlobal Actions do not target a particular row, for example “Submit abstract” adds a new paper entry to the list.Another example is the export functionality for “Paper list” and “User list” to e.g. Microsoft Excel. The featurerefers to all objects of the list, not only to the currently selected ones.

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5 Supportive Tools

In this chapter, you will get to know how to access the help information the OCS offers, in order to get the most out of it.The OCS provides help on three levels:

1. The Info Button for a quick digest on the possible actions for the current page, directly accessible on the page

2. The Howtos, step-by-step tutorials that help to accomplish a specific task

3. The OCS User Guide as a general overview and compendium of the high-level operations

The next sections will provide details on these components, including information about:

• What information does it supply?

• Where do I find it?

• How do I use it?

5.1 Info Button

The ( ) info button is a component of OCS pages, that gives short information about actions that can be currentlyperformed. This can alter based on:

• the currently visited OCS page

• the conference status if the visited page belongs to a conference

• your user roles (and hence if you are logged in)

If an OCS page contains the info button component, it can be found in the upper right corner of the main window.

The text supplied by the info button can be displayed by hovering the mouse cursor over the icon. The text stays visibleas long as the mousecursor is in the corresponding info frame or on the info button.

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For some OCS pages, such as the “Conference List” or the “Paper List” of a conference, there is a greater amount ofinformation. The info button displays all possible actions but also offers you the choice to read the information texts on aseperate page.

If you click on the highlighted link new page, you get refered to a page that contains short explanations for every possibleaction of the previous page.

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5.2 Howtos

Howtos ( ) are compact single-step tutorials that concentrate on one task. The steps are illustrated with screenshots.

If a step requires previous actions like navigating to a certain OCS page, howtos for those steps are included in an attachedsection named “Appendix” and are refered by a link on the respective step.

The howtos can be found on the “Howtos” page, which is always available on the right side of the footer and on the “OCSWelcome” page. A howto can be downloaded as a PDF document by clicking its title.

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Howtos that are related to a specific conference phase, like for example “How to submit a paper abstract”, are onlydisplayed if the howtos page is accessed from a page that belongs to a conference in the specific phase.

PC Chairs and Administrators are always able to see all howtos. Any other user will only be able to see the howtos thatare related to his or her user roles.

Note:To see all howtos, a PC Chair has to access the “Howtos” pagefrom the conference in which he or she is PC Chair.

If the howtos page is accessed from a page that is not related to any conference, such as the “Conference List” or the“OCS Welcome” page, global howtos are available only.

5.3 OCS User Guide

The OCS User Guide ( ) is a document that

• illustrates detailed steps and effects of each conference phase,

• provides information to PC Chair tasks and

• contains general information concerning the OCS

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The User Guide is linked as a PDF file on the right side of the footer of every page and also on the “OCS Welcome” page.

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6 User Profile & Settings

The user profile has three main functions:

• displaying personal information

• editing personal settings

• coordinating messages and invitations

The profile page renders the user and his activity in all participated conferences. It also is the initial point from which youset your personal settings and that holds private information, like your received messages.

6.1 Displayed Information

The user profile bears details on yourself and your activities in the conferences you participate in. The information onyour conference activities are separated into a short global overview and a detailed list of roles for the different conferenceas well as related papers.

The known information on yourself are located in the upper part of your profile. You have the choice to give moreinformation on your person. PC Members and PC Chairs will be able to see your

• name,

• primary e-mail address,

• institution and

• department.

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This is an example of how your user profile will be displayed to other users. Since other user profiles can only be accessedby viewing them in relation to a conference, the information about the user activities in the concerning conference arealso visible.

The visibility for another user is bound to their rights, e.g. another Author cannot see your e-mail address, submittedpapers etc. but a PC Chair can, as shown in the image above.

The information on your participated conferences is splitted into two parts,

• the “Global” part and

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• the “Conferences” part.

Both parts mostly consist of links to the corresponding page.

The global section contains a list of all conferences related to you, as well as the papers you authored etc.. You can clickon any conference title to navigate to the concerning conference.

Clicking on Participated conferences directs to a list of these conferences.

There are Authored papers links located in the global as well as in the conferences section. Clicking the link in theglobal section will direct you to a list of all papers including you as an author While the links in the conferences sectionwill direct you to a similar page containing only data on the specific conference.

The information shown in the conference section of your profile alters with the roles you have. For example, if you havesubmitted at least one paper, there is also list of all submitted papers. If you are not author of any paper, the authoredpapers link is not available.

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6.2 Personal Settings

The settings that your user profile conducts are

• managing your e-mail addressesIn addition to your already used “primary e-mail address”, you can add e-mail addresses that will also be connectedto your OCS account. You can log in with any e-mail address you added to your e-mail addresses.

In addition, this makes it a lot easier for other users to submit papers with you, giving them the option to use any ofyour entered e-mail addresses.

• managing your contact listsThis option only appears after you created your first contact list. A contact list is a bundle of users and allows youto send a message to multiple users in a comfortable and quick way.

• changing your password

• setting the language of the OCSYou can choose whether you want the OCS pages to be in german or english language, as well falling back to theselection of those two, that are default language of your browser.

• editing your profile dataHere you have the option to change your user data. The latter does not include the conference-related data, whichis collected automatically.

The information you name here will be used e.g. if you are listed in committee in a proceedings.

6.3 Coordinating Messages and Invitations

While notifications and invitations are sent to your primary e-mail address, the OCS also stores notifications in form ofmessages.

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You can get an overview of all received messages by clicking View received messages in the blue action menu. If youhave pending invitations, you also have the choice to view them in order to accept or reject them.

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7 Special Functions & Features

The OCS has plenty of special features which can be used intuitively but may not be obvious to casual or new users. Inaddition to a short description of where to find these special functions, this section explains how they can help getting themost out of the OCS.

7.1 Sort by Attribute

Most OCS page showing data in a table, like the “Conference list” or the “Paper List”, provides the function to sort thetable entries by attribute.

As an example, this “Paper List” contains several papers. The default order of papers depends on the paper ID. To change

the order of the papers, click the ( ) button next to the title of the according column. It changes its appearance to (

) and sorts the table by the corresponding title.

In this image, the papers are sorted by title. As you can see, the order is lexicographically ascending.

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To sort the papers in descending order, just click on the ( ) button again, it changes its appearance to ( ) .

Note:Of course, this function works for most sortable attribute and alsonot only for the “Paper List” but for all OCS pages with content intables.

7.2 Filter Results

On a page that shows data in a table, like the “Conference list” or the “Paper List”, you can also filter entries by attributes.this comes in handy especially for greater amounts of entries, as you will see the results that match your applied filters only.

In this example, the “Paper List” of a conference contains 6 papers. To apply a filter, simply click on the dropdownboxes and select the kind of filter.

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For example: To show only papers that contain the author “Rick Astley” click on All Fields and select Authors. Theauthors are the attribute that will be filtered for a text sequence. Enter the value your selected key should have. In thiscase “Astley” will be sufficient. Click on Show results.

Note:The text sequence typed is not case sensitive.

The table will be reduced to entries that meet the applied filters.

To reset the filters, click on Reset and all previously set filters will be set back to default.

7.3 Searching for a Paper

There is a shortcut for finding a specific paper by title, that eases this process a lot.

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Instead of applying a filter for the name of a paper, you can also type a part of the paper title into the textfield. Paper titlescontaining this subsequence will be automatically displayed. You can select any of them by clicking the title and willapply the chosen title as a filter.

Note:The text sequence typed is not case sensitive.

7.4 Multi Actions

On pages like the “Paper List” you can speed up your work with the OCS by doing a bunch of tasks at once.

Multiple actions allow you to select entries and perform an action on all selected entries. This way, you can view multiple“Paper Detail” pages, upload multiple documents to papers that you submitted and generally optimize your workflowwhen there is work that repeats for several entries. Even downloading can be bundled in order to have one zip file or, e.g.,a concatenatedpng.png document.

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You can select multiple papers by clicking the checkbox on the left. Afterwards, perform the action for all selected papersby clicking the corresponding Action in the header of the table as in the image.

Note:Make sure to click on the action in the header of the table. Clickingan action for a single table row will perform the action only forthe paper in the corresponding row, regardless which papers areselected.

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You can select all displayed papers by clicking the checkbox in the table header. In the same way, you can deselect allpapers by clicking it again.

If you observe an error message, you don’t have the permission to perform the action you selected on all of the selected

papers. Papers, for which this action is not possible, are highlighted with an ( ) -icon. You can proceed to perform theaction you chose on all papers for which this action is available by clicking Proceed.

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7.5 Bundled View

The “bundled view” allows you to do a single workstep for a collection of similar objects, such as downloading thedocuments of multiple papers in an overview, send multiple mails or invite several users at once.

In this example, the bundled view is available after performing the multi action to view several papers at once. The bun-dled view feature performs an action for all selected objects. Switch to the bundled view by clicking Switch to bundledview in the upper right corner and you can, for example, download all papers concatenated into one PDF file.

The downloaded document will be composed of all documents of the paper as well as a content page at the beginning.

Note:Every page of the PDF file will also contain the conference name,paper ID, paper version and its title for best transparency.

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Created in OCS version 1.9.0 - March 6, 2013

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