A few months back research division proposed a concept of boards showing available people from different divisions and when they were available to man their post so those who needed their assistance would know they are there. This isn't anything particularly new, security and duty boards have been available for some time, but those divisions aren't really required that much by new members, what the difference is here is it would focus on divisions where people actual require assistance a lot.
To test this we have had specially made boards up in DS19 for sometime, you'd see them if you go to the Ferengi like quarks bar. members can simply click the board and providing we have a picture of them in the server, not only would their picture appear on the boards in and outside the bar but also on a large board down in the sandbox
What was important was to make the system as simple as possible to use. to do this we incorporated a non notecard policy for the board, access lists wouldn't be created the conventional way. We made the decision that the persons picture would be the access list itself. when a picture is submitted its required to be named in a certain way like this <Secondlife name>@<uuid> , so a picture could be named something like "job blogs@a822ff2b-ff02-491d-b45d-dcr10a2de0s2". Your uuid code can easily be found by just checking your profile and looking for the key info and copying the string of numbers next to it.
With that information its easy to check the right person signed in, a message is set directly to them when someone clicks their picture and the system knows when they are offline so they can be automatically signed out. This way, your not constantly editing access lists, drop the picture in with he correct naming and UUID code is all you need.
The initial idea for the boards were for the Academy since impromptu classes have been shown to be the most effective overall means of teaching classes. This is due to secondlife's nature people pop in and out at peculiar times and its not always easy for them to attend scheduled classes. What boards like these do, when new members appear in world they can instantly see if those who can assist them are available.
Versions of the board for CDO and Personnel are also being looked at. The idea is to make it easier for members and potential members to contact those most likely to be able to assist them, something we have found in researching this is that a lot of people we noticed may need help but are too intimidated to ask for it even though there are members online available to help.
The boards also comes in a neat hud version which can be placed on your screen. attach and click the board edge to re sync when your in one of the GFC sims.
Also if your wearing one of the latest versions of the TPHUD which you can pick up from medical. They already have voice commands which can sign you in and out of any of these boards which are available. So for instance if I wanted to sign into the academy board but wasn't in range of one of the boards and I had the tphud on i could just say in chat "sign academy". will toggle signing in and out of that board. If i was associated with more than one board like the academy and research board, then by typing "sign in" would sign me into all boards automatically as saying "sign out" will do the reverse. This script can be easily added to other devices.
This can also be seen as one of the early starts of new systems being put in place which will make access to member and information more freely accessible. So, watch this space.
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