Sharing - both volunteering help and asking for it - with your peers is an effective way of saving time and effort and can provide a rewarding environment where you can gain wider recognition for the work you've done.

The IS's partnership with the IDeA provides an easy-to-use collaboration environment where you can do this.

As a member of the CoP collaboration spaces on the IS/IDeA site, you have access to a suite of tools and techniques to enable you to network with your peers, share thoughts, documents, best practice and be involved in progressing your work as a group. You also have the potential to access thousands of other members and their experience.

To effectively use these CoPs you need to register, putting in a bit of background information about yourself, join a group (or groups), get notification when someone adds something to the group, and familiarise yourself with the technology.

Registering

You must first register online (follow the onscreen prompts or view the instructions on how to do this).

Please note that once you register, you should receive an immediate confirmation email to the email address you specified. You need to click the link contained in this email to activate your registration. If you do NOT receive this email, the chances are that you mis-typed your email address. We can sort this out for you - please email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Your profile

You should ensure that you update and amend your profile on the IS/IDeA site. Include what your main areas of responsibility are, any specialist knowledge you feel you have, and any projects you are currently working on. If you would like to, please also upload a picture, and include a phone number so other group members can contact you by phone if they wish.

Joining a group

You can search the website to find communities you may be interested in joining, (or view all communities) and then apply for membership (click "Join" or "Apply to Join"). Note that if you apply for membership to a private group, you will need to wait until a facilitator approves your application.

Email notifications

Please set email alerts (notifications) on all areas of the CoP, so that you are immediately appraised should anyone add anything to your collaboration space. This way, you know what's going on, and can respond if you wish. Even if you don't feel you have anything to contribute at this stage, it means you are aware of what is happening and what people are talking about.

To set alerts, log in to your CoP and select each component of the collaboration space (document library, forum, events, messages etc) and click "set up email alert for ...." Instructions on how to do this are available online.

Using the technology

The CoPs use a combination of discussion forums, RSS (news) feeds, member lists, blogs and wikis, all of which are more fully described under the what we offer page.