GroupWise 5.2 Proxy

By Pat Evans, Campus Wide Networks Computer Support Specialist

This is intended to be the first in a series of educational and informational GroupWise articles.

So, you’ve been using GroupWise 5.2 for a while now. You’re cruising along, reading and sending mail, maybe even using calendar functions to record your work progress during the day. And you’re bored. Or swamped. How would you like to spice up you GroupWise adventures? One way to enhance your GroupWise day is to try Proxy.

What is Proxy?

Proxy is defined by Webster’s Dictionary in part as: "authority or power to act for another." With GroupWise Proxy that is exactly what you will be able to do. Proxy allows you to define who you wish to have access to your mail, calendar, notes, tasks, alarms and notifications. If you are the person granting proxy rights, you will be able to let someone else schedule all your appointments or even answer the mail while you work on more important matters… that tricky eight-foot putt. If you are the person who’s been given proxy rights, now you’ll be able to view the world from the grantor’s eyes. Of course what you see there is a whole other matter. Needless to say, Proxy can be a very powerful tool, and like any powerful tool, can be abused. We will explore that issue later.

Granting Proxy

So, you decide you want to work on that troubling long putt. To free up your time, you decide to grant Proxy rights to your administrative assistant so that they can handle your calendar and filter through the daily grind of messages from colleagues, students and friends. To do so, you do the following steps:

1. Click Tools, Options, double-click Security, click the Proxy Access tab. (Mac users would click on Edit, Preferences, double-click Security, and select Proxy Access from the drop-down menu.)
   
2. Type the name of the user you wish to give Proxy Access to in the Name box, then click Add User. As a word of warning, if you don’t click on Add User, and begin granting rights right away, you will instead be granting those rights to the Minimum User Access, or in effect, everybody with GroupWise at UNT. (To be safe, you may wish to access the little address book to the right of the Name box to find the correct person, click OK and that person is immediately added as a user to the Access list).
   
3. After you’ve added the user, click the check boxes of the Access rights you wish to grant the newly Added User. Then double-check that you didn’t give the Minimum User Access the same rights.
   
4. Click OK, then Close Options. (Or for Macs, click OK, and then close Preferences.)

That’s all there is to it. Oh, one other thing, you do have to tell the person you’ve granted proxy rights that they now have all this newfound power.

What if you’ve been given Proxy Rights?

Your day has started off just like many others, so many deadlines and so little time. Your boss comes over and says that they’ve come to trust you and your work so much that they’ve given you proxy rights to their GroupWise account. Also, would you mind managing their mail and all necessary appointments for their schedule this semester? Now, you could say, "Great, another duty", but you’re a savvy GroupWise user and top-notch assistant and thus you see this a golden opportunity to actually make life a little easier. With you in some control of the bosses calendar, you can exercise the power to manage office time all from one location, your GroupWise at your desk.

Having looked in Help on how to accept Proxy rights, you know you need to do the following:

1. Click on the little androgynous person in the lower left-hand corner of your GroupWise and choose Proxy. (Mac users will click on the person symbol in the lower left-hand corner of their screen.)
   
2. Type in the name of person giving you proxy access in the Name box, and then click OK. (If you mistype the name, or accidentally type in someone else’s name, GroupWise will let you know. To be sure though, you can always access the address book to the right of the name field.)

What can you do with Proxy?

To be more accurate, what do you want to give access and rights to, and just how much rights? Well, proxy is a security issue at its heart with the bottom line being how much you are allowing someone else to read and/or write to your GroupWise account. Access Rights are easily broken into two intuitive categories - Read and Write, and four or five options (depending on o/s platform).

Read

As you’d guess, Read simply allows you to read the contents of the grantors mailbox. Read can be specified for each type of item, or not at all. So even if you’ve been given rights to view the boss’s Appointments, you may not be allowed to read his or her mail.

Write

You have all the same rights as Read, but now you can send and create stuff in the item given rights to. Not only can you view the boss’s Appointments you can schedule appointments. The ultimate level of trust would come when granted write access to the boss’s mail. (As a cautionary warning, if you do grant write access to your mail, be aware that if that person you’ve granted write access to sends a mail item out written while proxied into your account, that mail will indicate you wrote and sent it. Please be careful when granting this particular right to your mail.)

Subscribe to my Alarms

As the options states, every time the proxy grantor has an alarm go off, you will get the same alarm. However, there are a couple of requirements to make this happen: first, you have to be on the same post office and you must have GroupWise Notify running on your machine.

Subscribe to my Notifications

With this option enabled, you will be notified each and every time mail goes out or comes in depending on what the grantor wants to be notified about. This option shares the same requirements as alarms: you must be on the same post office and you must have Notify running on your machine.

Modify Options/Rules/Groups

This is the "full monty" of trust. If granted this right, you now have complete access to the proxy grantor’s mailbox. If you have Modify rights, you can change the rules and option they operate by, including who else has access to their mailbox.

Archive Items

Allows you to archive items in the grantor’s mailbox.

Read Items Marked Private

If Modify was the full monty of trust, this is the Holy Grail of trust. You can literally read everything in the grantor’s mailbox, including items marked private. If you don’t have this right granted, the grantor can hide stuff from you by using Mark Private from the Actions menu.

A few last words about Proxy

Now you’re pretty much Master of the GroupWise Universe when it comes to Proxy. It is a learning experience that may make your day and the manipulation of daily information much more manageable. You’ve got read rights to your bosses’ mail, and write rights to the calendar, and you’re on top of the flow of information in and out of their mailbox. You’re happy and the boss is finally getting a handle on that tricky putt. One thing you’ve noticed could make it easier for everyone… not just yourself, but for everyone in your office (especially true if you’ve got people going here there and everywhere) and you need to know what they’re doing and where they are. It’s Proxy read rights of the Minimum User Access.

Minimum User Access will allow everyone in the system to Proxy into your calendar, your colleagues or your bosses’ Calendar. This can prove useful later when you need to know if they are or are not available for a scheduled meeting, and why. (The catch here is that everybody needs to be using the calendar for this to work!)

As you may have noticed, Proxy pretty much makes your GroupWise Mailbox open for all people you’ve granted proxy rights. However, for the sake of privacy, you can always mark your mail and your appointments Mark Private, if you haven’t already given them that great proxy right.

Other Resources

If you’d like to learn more about GroupWise and the many features it provides to make your collaborative efforts more productive and satisfying, please visit the following URL’s:

• GroupWise End User FAQ: www.unt.edu/cwn
  
• Cool Solutions Magazine: www.gwmag.com
  
• and please take advantage of the GroupWise Guides provided under the Help Menu.