TR Out Loud FAQ - My Workspace

Sonja Thompson: It's a brand new year here at TechRepublic, 2009, and what better way to bring in a new year than with TROLOV -- or TR Out Loud on Video. We have another FAQ for you all today, which will hopefully help make your experience here on TechRepublic a little easier. Yeah, we did publish a few FAQs in 2008, and you better believe that I'll provide a link to those in the blog notes.

I'm Sonja Thompson, a senior editor for TechRepublic, and this is TR Out Loud FAQ for January 2, 2009.

All of the tips that I'm going to share with you today revolve around My Workspace. Not MY workspace, as in Sonja's workspace, but My Workspace, which each person receives when they sign up for a free TechRepublic membership.

Okay, so first off, you have to be logged in to the site. Now, when you hover over the My Workspace link in the top right-hand corner of any TechRepublic page, you'll see a little drop-down box with My Updates and My Contacts. Fancy, right? Well, the fancy doesn't end there... let's click through so that we can see even more of the goodies that are available with My Workspace.

Now we're talkin'! Where do we start, right? Well, I've got a GREAT place for you to start -- My Profile! I mean YOUR profile... you know what I mean.

Have you entered a bio on the site? Is it up to date? Lord knows that I have to update mine at least once a year around here. Simply click Edit Profile, complete or update the seven sections on this page, and select Update my Profile. It sounds easy, it IS easy, and it'll make me happy. That's what you call a win-win situation right there.

Let's go back to My Workspace and take a look at a couple other useful features you can find here.

My Updates shows when activity has occurred within the discussions and questions you've subscribed to - and when somebody adds you as a contact   or a previous contact updates their information on the site. You can even filter site updates by type: Discussions, Questions, and Contacts. To get a more comprehensive view of My Updates, click the My Updates tab or View all under the Updates section. From there, select View all of your updates for the last 90 days.

My Forum posts is another way to see the Questions and Discussions you're interested in at a quick glance. You can filter My Forum Posts by the following criteria: Discussions Posted To, Discussions Started, Discussions Subscribed To, Questions Posted To, Questions Started, Questions Subscribed To, and Helpful Answers. Who doesn't like helpful answers? Now, this is a great time to remind everyone who asks questions on the site to give a Thumbs Up for helpful answers. This is the place where these are listed. As you can see, I have one Thumb. Whoo Hooo!

The last feature on My Workspace that I'm going to cover in this FAQ is My Contacts. I love My Contacts. You can see which of your contacts are online and offline, plus find out who counts you as a contact.

It gets better. Let's click through to one of my contacts. Oh my goodness... look at all this information - their job role, location, how long they've been a member, plus you can read their bio, see how active they are on the site, what interests they have, current technology implementation, and who they count -- and who counts them -- as a contact. You can even view All contacts and Posts from contacts.

I know that's a lot, but there's more. If your contact allows peer mail, you can send him or her a private message. You can also see their activity in the Questions and Discussions forums, such as how many helpful answers they've given and all of their discussion posts. Or you can click the Forum Posts tab and view this information that way. AND you can click their Contacts, see all of THEIR information, and so on and so forth.

As you can see, the treasures in My Workspace, which is just a few clicks away, will help you keep up with other knowledgeable, like-minded IT professionals, as well as the topics that you're most interested in learning and/or talking about. That's it for this FAQ. Tune in next week for your regularly scheduled program. I'm Sonja Thompson, and this is TR Out Loud.