Communication is critical for any group of people working together. In many organizations, it is difficult to get all of the members of a team together to share information regularly.
A newsgroup can solve many communication problems. It enables anyone in the group to read or post information at any time. It is easy for someone to find all of the information about a particular topic because articles are organized into topic threads. And unlike e-mail, newsgroups provide a mechanism for easily archiving information for future reference.
Goal: To improve communication between department members working on a project and to organize and archive project information.
Components: MicrosoftÒ Windows NTÒ Server version 4.0; MicrosoftÒ Internet Information Server (IIS) version 4.0; MicrosoftÒ Internet Mail and News version 4.0.
Environment: A Microsoft® Windows NT® network.
Setup Considerations: Install the Microsoft NNTP Service component of IIS using the IIS Setup program.
Other: To use a newsgroup as an information archive, do not set an expiration time for articles and be sure to back up the newsgroup directory frequently.
Hosting a few private newsgroups within your organization typically requires few server resources. You can usually use any computer running Windows NT Server. Because Microsoft NNTP Service uses the standard NNTP protocol, department members can have access to newsgroups using any NNTP client software, although Microsoft® Internet Mail and News does provide additional security options if you need them. The server and clients must be set up to use the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) networking protocol.
Start off with just a few newsgroups for a project. If your project is to design and build a better mousetrap, you might call your newsgroups mousetrap.design, mousetrap.test, and mousetrap.manufacturing. Because articles within each newsgroup are organized by subject, you do not need a separate newsgroup for each specific subject.
The Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) for your newsgroups have the following formats:
news://server/newsgroup
news://server/newsgroup/article
Depending on how confidential the articles will be, you might need to define security for the newsgroups. If the information is available to anyone in your organization and if your network is protected by a firewall, you should be able to allow anonymous logon. But if you need more security, create Windows NT Server accounts for each newsgroup user. Then restrict access to the newsgroup directories to those accounts. Microsoft NNTP Service manages security using Windows NT Server accounts and permissions.
Members of your department can read and post articles about their project on a timely basis, keeping each other informed without having to schedule frequent meetings.