Guide: Staff Introduction

Welcome to MousePaw Media! We’re really excited to have you aboard. This tutorial will help you get started. If you need additional help, contact your internship supervisor.

This tutorial will also get you started as a MousePaw Media staff member. Read through it in order. Watch out for…

Important

These are things you should do now.

Warning

These are things you need to watch out for.

Technical Requirements

We strongly recommend installing Ubuntu 22.04 or later on your computer. If you’re using Windows 10 or Windows 11, we recommend installing Ubuntu 22.04 via the Windows Subsystem for Linux.

We do support macOS if that’s what you use, although we don’t fully support it.

See Ubuntu Setup: Installing for instructions on installing Ubuntu 22.04. If you need help, contact your mentor.

Security

Your MousePaw Media account may grant you access to personal and private company information, advanced controls that can potentially harm our systems, and more. It is your responsibility to keep your MousePaw Media account secure!

Passwords and Password Management

A good password should:

  • Have a length of at least 16 characters; longer is always better.

  • Have uppercase and lowercase letters.

  • Have at least one number or symbol.

It is perfectly acceptable if you use real words, but you should avoid anything that can be associated with you. Names, biographical data, pets, and signficant dates should always be avoided! A random but memorable “passphrase” consisting of random words is a good option, especially if you add symbols and numbers.For example, Yodeling7_Goats_Twirl_Vicariously is a strong password (but don’t use that exact passphrase, since it’s written here!)

Bitwarden (described below) has an excellent password and passphrase generator.

To save your MousePaw Media credentials, you should use a secure password manager. Never trust your web browser’s “save password” feature for this.

If you aren’t already using a secure password manager, install Bitwarden. Besides being free and open-source, it is end-to-end encrypted, so your passwords can never be accessed in a data breach of Bitwarden’s servers.

  1. Go to https://bitwarden.com and tap Get Started to create a free account.

  2. Use your personal email address, and create a secure master password. Your password should be long, unique, and never consist of pet names, relative names, or other personal information.

  3. Write down your master password and store it in a secure physical location. NEVER keep it on a digital device. Be advised, for security reasons, if you lose your Bitwarden master password, you will NEVER be able to recover either it or any information you stored in your Bitwarden account. A password reset on Bitwarden will erase everything in your account.

  4. Go to https://bitwarden.com/download/ and install the Bitwarden extension for your web browser and each of your devices. This will allow you to access your passwords and other secure data stored in Bitwarden from any device, so long as you know your master password.

Warning

WE WILL NEVER ASK YOU FOR YOUR PASSWORD! Our IT department has the ability to reset any account password if necessary.

Note

Set up Bitwarden now and store your MousePaw Media credentials. If you already use a different secure password manager, add your MousePaw Media credentials to that instead.

Multi-Factor Authentication

Passwords are a good first step in securing your account, but they’re not the whole story. If your password is compromised, Multi-Factor Authentication, or MFA, is the next line of defence. MFA requires that you use a separate physical device, like your smartphone, to verify that a login is indeed coming from you, and not just some random person who has your username and password.

To set up MFA, you will need to install an authenticator app. Unless you are already using another trustworthy authenticator app, please install one of the following:

  • To use your iOS or Android smartphone as your MFA device, install the Microsoft Authenticator app.

  • To use your Linux machine as your MFA device, install the Authenticator app from Flatpak.

Note

Set up an MFA authenticator app now.

In the sections that follow, you will be installing MFA for GitLab, which handles authentication for most of the rest of our collaboration tools.

-DO NOT* skip those sections!

Security Tips

All the security tools in the world mean nothing without a good dose of common sense. Here are some very important things to keep in mind at all times.

  1. Never share your password with anyone. We won’t ask for it. Period.

  2. Store your passwords in your secure Password Manager.

  3. Don’t leave your work devices unlocked and unattended.

  4. Consider enabling full-disk encryption when you install Linux.

  5. Be careful clicking on unusual or disguised links in emails, even if the email looks like it’s from within the company or from a coworker. Verify URLs and SSL certificates before entering your password or other information.

  6. If you lose a device you’ve used to access your MousePaw Media account, or which you use for MFA, contact us immediately!

Recovering Access

If you lose access to your MousePaw Media account at any point, whether that’s a missing password or a lost or non-functioning MFA device, don’t panic! MousePaw Media administrators are able to reset passwords and MFA credentials.

To start the process, contact it@mousepawmedia.com. We will arrange to work with you over video chat (for authentication purposes) to restore access to your account.

Staff Network

The Staff Network consists of five major components:

  • SOGo [Email/Calendar] (mail.mousepawmedia.com)

  • GitLab (gitlab.mousepawmedia.com)

  • Discourse (discourse.mousepawmedia.com)

  • Nextcloud (cloud.mousepawmedia.com)

  • OrangeHRM (eco.mousepawmedia.com)

We also use Jitsi Meet for video chat.

Email

As with any job, email and calendar are essential. You were issued a company email address, which comes with a calendar and a contact book.

Warning

Be sure to check your company email every single day, and respond in a timely fashion!

SOGo Setup

You can check your email and calendar through Nextcloud (recommended) or the SOGo web client. This is useful if you don’t want to configure an external client, or need to check your email without access to your usual device.

First, go to https://mail.mousepawmedia.com/SOGo. Sign in using your full company email address and your password.

Important

Access your company email through the SOGo client.

Mail Settings

You can access a number of advanced settings for your email account by going directly to mail.mousepawmedia.com and logging in with your full email address and password.

Some things you can do from here include:

  • Viewing login history (from Mailbox -> General)

  • Adjust additional mailbox settings under Mailbox -> Settings.

  • Setting up temporary email aliases, which are useful when you need to provide an email address for something, but want to be able to delete it if it starts to receive spam.

  • Control spam settings, whitelist/blacklist email addresses.

  • Generate app passwords for IMAP/SMTP/CalDAV/CardDAV logins without exposing your company email address.

  • Check the intercepted spam in Quarantine, and take action on it (including delivering to mailbox) by clicking Show item, scrolling down, and clicking Actions.

You can also jump right to SOGo from here via the Login to webmail button under Mailbox, or from the Apps menu at upper-right.

IMAP/SMTP Access

You can also connect your account to an external email client, such as Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird, or your mobile device.

You can find full configuration instructions by going to mail.mousepawmedia.com, going to Mailbox -> General, and scrolling down to the [Show configuration guides for email clients and smartphones] link. That will show customized instructions for your email account and our servers.

In short, here are the recommended server settings:

  • Username: (Your full company email address.)

  • Password: (Your company password.)

  • Incoming Mail: IMAP (recommended)

    • Server Name: mail.mousepawmedia.com

    • Port: 993

    • Connection security: SSL/TLS

    • Authentication method: Normal password

  • Outgoing Mail: SMTP

    • Server Name: mail.mousepawmedia.com

    • Port: 587 (recommended) or 465.

    • Connection security: STARTTLS (for post 587) or SSL/TLS (for port 465)

    • Authentication method: Normal password

Important

Connect your company email to an email client, such as Thunderbird, Evolution, or your smartphone.

OrangeHRM

Our “human resources” department is called ECO, which stands for -Employee Care and Opportunity*.

Most ECO-related tasks are handled through OrangeHRM, including:

  • Time Tracking

  • Leave (time off)

  • Performance Reviews

  • Employee records

You are responsible for reporting your time every day you work, and you must submit your timesheets every week.

Logging Into OrangeHRM

Your OrangeHRM account is handled separately from your GitLab account. You will receieve an email with your initial password for OrangeHRM. If you have not yet recieved this email, contact eco@mousepawmedia.com to request an account.

Go to `https://eco.mousepawmedia.com and log in. Click your name in the upper-right corner of OrangeHRM and click Change Password. Change your password on the screen that appears. You may use the same password as for GitLab if you prefer, or you may create a different password. In either case, our password and security policies still apply! Once you’ve entered your new password, click Save.

Important

Log into OrangeHRM.

Updating Your Personal Information

For administrative and legal reasons, we keep track of the contact information for our staff. This information is kept secure, and will not be accessed or used outside of ECO and administration.

On the left, click My Info. Fill out the following fields. Be sure to click Save on each page.

  • Profile photo (click the gray silhouette): must be a head-and-shoulders photo of you.

  • Personal Details
    • Employee Full Name

    • Nationality: based on current permanent residency, not heritage.

    • Marital Status

    • Date of Birth

    • Gender (you may omit if your gender is not present).

  • Contact Details
    • Address

    • Telephone
      • Home/Mobile: shown only to ECO/admins

      • Work: shown in staff directory, include if you want others to be able to call.

    • Email
      • Work Email: shown in staff directory; use your MousePaw Media email.

      • Other Email: shown only to ECO/admin

    • Emergency Contacts
      • (Please add at least one emergency contact.)

We do NOT request that you provide your driver’s license, dependents, or immigration records.

Important

Go to My Info and fill out your information.

Logging Your Time

You must report all time worked at MousePaw Media by Monday the following week. This serves two functions:

  • Indicates your attendance, along with your journal (described later).

  • Creates accountability for your use of volunteer time.

Warning

Reporting your time is of utmost importance! Set reminders for yourself to remember to fill out and submit your timesheets. Repeated failures to do so may result in disciplinary action.

To log your time, in OrangeHRM, click Time on the left. You should be on the My Timesheets page by default, but if not, go to Timesheets and My Timesheets.

Ensure you are looking at the desired timesheet period, and click Edit. Each major project you work on will have its own row on the timesheet. You may add as many rows as you need by clicking Add Row.

Under Project, type and select the name of the project you’re working on. Aside from our actual projects, such as Platform - IOSqueak or Applications - Quarkboard, we have several other entries:

  • General - Community: interacting with or moderating our community.

  • General - Meetings: syncronous meetings.

  • General - Mentorship: all activities relating to training interns.

  • General - Other: anything that doesn’t fit in another category. USE SPARINGLY.

  • General - Setup: setting up workstation, tools, development environment, etc.

  • General - Training: using MousePaw Media curated training materials. Do NOT use for “research”.

  • DevOps - DevOps: maintaining build, test, and deployment systems (regardless of project).

  • DevOps - Documentation: writing documentation that is NOT specific to a project.

  • DevOps - Standards: maintaining standards.

We also have administration-related “projects”. Non-management staff should NOT use these without first confirming with their supervisor.

  • Administration - Administration: management activities.

  • Administration - ECO: ECO (HR) management activities.

  • Administration - Hiring: screening, interviewing, or reviewing candidates.

  • Administration - IT: maintaining our servers or collaborative platforms.

In all cases, select General under the Activity section.

Enter the number of hours for each day. Use decimal hours to represent partial hours, such as 1.5 for an hour and a half.

When you’ve finished updating your timesheet for the day, click Save.

Note

It is best to update your timesheets at the end of each day you work, rather than trying to remember your hours at the end of the week.

When you have submitted all of your time for the week, click Submit to submit your timesheet.

Warning

You MUST submit your time for each week by the following Monday. Set a reminder for yourself!

Important

Set a reminder for yourself to log your time.

If you need a tool to help you track your time, check out the Timecard application, created by Jason C. McDonald.

Requesting Leave

When you are going to miss a week, or come in below your required number of hours for a week, you should submit for Leave.

Warning

Even if you do not have a mandatory hours requirement, we strongly recommend requesting leave when you are going to be out of the office for a week or more! This ensures that everyone knows you will be unavailable, and when you will be back.

To apply for leave or manage your leave entitlements, go to Leave.

Entitlements -> My Entitlements shows how much of each type of leave you have available. Due to our low hour requirements, each “Day” of leave actually entitles you to a full week. If you only plan to be out for part of the week, you can submit for a partial day.

Apply allows you to apply for leave. Select the Leave Type you want to apply. Set the From Date to Monday of the first week you want to take leave for. Set the To Date to the Monday of the last week you want to take leave for, even if it’s the same as From Date.

Normally, you can set Duration to Full Day to just take the whole week(s). However, if you have a mandatory weekly hour commitment and want to work less than those hours, you can select Specify Time. The times you enter DO NOT matter, only the actual duration.

Describe the nature of your leave in Comments, and then select Apply.

My Leave shows your submitted leave requests and their status. You can also click Cancel next to a leave request if you no longer wish to take that leave.

Note

If you have further questions about leave, contact the ECO department at eco@mousepawmedia.com.

ECO Forms

Some additional ECO activites are handled through Discourse (discussed later).

  • Formal Grievance: If you are unable to resolve a conflict with a co-worker via informal discussions, you may file this form within 15 days of the most recent incident.

  • Promotion Request: When you are ready to be graduate from the internship program, or otherwise be promoted to a higher seniority, you must fill out and submit this form. Interns will also need the appropriate -Internship Checklist*.

  • Resignation Request: If you choose to leave MousePaw Media, you must file a resignation request. If you’re an intern, we may choose to terminate your staff role with us instead of accepting the resignation, as specified in your contract.

Management Forms

There are a couple more ECO forms which are accessible only to management.

  • Disciplinary Warning Notice: For serious and/or recurring problems, a supervisor may detail the incident and the expected remedy using this form. If you receive one, be sure to read it, sign it, and send it back via e-mail ASAP.

  • Termination: In the rare and unfortunate case where an staff member must be fired, we use this form. There is also a separate -Internship Termination* form.

GitLab

We run our own private instance of GitLab at https://gitlab.mousepawmedia.com. This is where most of our development work takes place. Most importantly, it hosts our repositories.

In addition, your MousePaw Media GitLab account serves as the single-sign on authentication for most of the rest of the network.

Setting Up Your Account

New Account

If you did not previously have a MousePaw Media GitLab account, you will be issued one associated with your MousePaw Media email address. Look for the email in that inbox with the link to log in. After agreeing to terms, your account will be active and ready for use.

Go to your User Settings by clicking your picture in the sidebar, and clicking Edit Profile. On the left, click Password, and change your password.

Now click Account and add two-factor authentication.

Important

If you have a new account, set it up now following the instructions above.

Existing Account

If you already have a MousePaw Media GitLab account, you can simply associate your new MousePaw Media email address with it. Go to your User Settings by clicking your picture in the sidebar, and clicking Edit Profile. Then select Emails. Click Add new email, enter your MousePaw Media email address, and click Add email address. You will be prompted to verify the address. Once you have, you should set your MousePaw Media email address as your Primary email for the account.

You will also (probably) want to change your username to your MousePaw Media username. You can do this form Edit Profile and Account. Enter your MousePaw Media username under Change username, and click Update username.

Finally, if you haven’t already added two-factor authentication, click Account and add two-factor authentication.

Important

If you have a pre-existing account, set it up now following the instructions above.

Editing Your Profile and Settings

Go to your User Settings by clicking your picture in the sidebar, and clicking Edit Profile. Fill out the following fields at a minimum, as well as any others you wish:

  • Public avatar (a head-and-shoulders photo of you)

  • Time settings - Time zone

  • Main settings - Full name - Pronouns - Public email (set to your MousePaw Media email) - Job title - Organization (MousePaw Media)

Click Update profile settings.

Now click Preferences on the left sidebar. Here, you may define the appearance and behavior of GitLab to match your preferences.

Important

Fill out your profile.

Groups

On the main sidebar for GitLab, click Groups. This lists all of the groups on our GitLab instance which you have access to view.

Groups serve two purposes in our GitLab:

  1. Groups organize projects by department: Platform, Applications, DevOps, and Content Development. There is also a Web project under Applications.

  2. Groups manage permissions throughout our network. In particular, the Staff group indiciates a person is official MousePaw Media staff, and grants access to staff-related resources.

Projects

On the main sidebar for GitLab, click Projects. Here, you will see all of the projects at MousePaw Media you have access to, as well as their associated Group (department). Click on one to navigate to the repository.

On the project page, you’ll notice that the sidebar has a lot of entries. Here’s a brief tour of the most important:

  • Plan

    • Wiki: This is where we store internal documentation for the project, which is written for the reference of developers working on the code. External documentation is in the repository itself, usually in the docs/ directory.

  • Code

    • Merge requests: Proposed changes to the code. All work you submit to a repository must be in a merge request.

    • Repository: the source code itself.

    • Branches: a list of all branches in the repository.

    • Commits: a history of changes to the code.

    • Tags: named points in the repository history which are important.

    • Snippets: small pieces of code and text associated with the project, but which we don’t want to include in the main repository at present. Think of this as a project-specific “paste bin”.

  • Build

    • Pipelines: chains of test and build jobs that are running, completed, or failed.

    • Jobs: individual test or build jobs that are running, completed, or failed. These are run as part of pipelines, but can be browsed individually too.

    • Artifacts: built versions of the project, produced by certain jobs.

  • Deploy

    • Releases: sets of artifacts and changelogs that constitute a single released version of the project. Associated with a specific tag.

    • Package Registry: a registry of packaged artifacts associated with the project. Users with access permissions can download/install packages directly from this registry.

    • Container Registry: a registry of Docker images associated with the project. Users with access permissions can download Docker images directly from this registry.

There are a number of other GitLab features. Some are more advanced, and others we simply do not use.

Note

We do NOT use GitLab Issues, as it is simply too limited to be useful. We are in the process of building our own issue tracking system, but in the meantime, we use Discourse (covered below).

Snippets

If you want to share a piece of code or text which is not strictly associated with a project, you can use the Snippets tool. From the main sidebar of GitLab, select Snippets. Then, in the upper-right, click New snippet.

If your snippet is meant to be associated with a particular project, navigate to that project in GitLab, and go to Code -> Snippets instead.

Learn More about GitLab

GitLab has very thorough and up-to-date documentation: GitLab Docs. You can access this, as well as see the current version of GitLab we are running, by clicking Help in the lower-left corner of GitLab anytime.

Note

We are running the Free Self-Hosted tier of GitLab EE, so some features are not available to us. In the documentation, take note when a feature is indicated as being for the Premium or Ultimate tier or SaaS offering.

Discourse

Most of our collaboration takes place on Discourse. It is home to our:

  • Community

  • Curated training material

  • Q&A

  • Issue Tracker

  • Software Product Specifications

  • Forms and Surveys

You can sign into Discourse at https://discourse.mousepawmedia.com using your MousePaw Media GitLab account.

Be sure to read the community rules by clicking the FAQ button from the left sidebar.

Important

Read the FAQ!

Reading and Posting

When you first go to Discourse, you’ll start on the Home screen. This displays all the categories, as well as the latest posts.

Click the “General” category, and then click the “Personal Introductions” topic. After reading as much as you want, click the Reply button at the bottom of the topic (not the one at the bottom of each post) to create your own post on the topic.

Important

Reply to the “Personal Introductions” topic with an introduction of yourself.

You can learn more about using Discourse from the “Discourse New User Guide” under the “General” category.

Important

Read “Discourse New User Guide”.

Journal

Every member of the staff is required to maintain a weekly journal, detailing what they worked on in the past week. In addition to posting one’s own journal, each staff member must reply to two other Journal entries.

Warning

Posting your Journal entry, and replying to two other Journal entires, is a mandatory part of attendance!

You can view the journals by visiting the “Journals” category, or by clicking Journals on the left sidebar. Only members of staff are allowed to view this category.

Note

If you cannot view the category, ask an administrator to grant you “moderator” privileges, which designates you as a staff member.

To post your own journal entry, click New Topic in the Journals category, and use the provided template.

Important

Set a reminder to post your journal entry by Monday each week, and reply to at least two other staff member journal entries.

Issue Tracker

We are in the process of building our own issue tracker. In the meantime, Discourse is serving as our issue tracker, and will continue to be the staging area for community-reported issues.

You can view the issue tracker by visiting the “Issue Tracker” category, or by clicking Issue Tracker on the left sidebar.

Nextcloud

Nextcloud is our staff-only file share. It not only hosts our design and administration files, but also a number of shared resources. If you work in the Design or Content Development departments, you’ll upload a lot of your work to Nextcloud.

Settings

When you first log into Nextcloud, click your profile photo in the upper-right corner and select Personal settings. This will take you to your profile and settings screen.

Click Notifications at left. Under Activity, change what notifications you wish you receive. In particular, you will probably want to uncheck most of the Email notifications to keep your inbox from getting overwhelming.

Click Connected Accounts at left.

Under Discourse integration, ensure the Discourse instance address is set to https://discourse.mousepawmedia.com. Ensure you authorize Nextcloud to handle “web+nextclouddiscourse” links (see sidebar) and click Connect to Discourse. You will be redirected to Discourse, where you should click Authorize.

Under GitLab integration, ensure the GitLab instance address field is set to https://gitlab.mousepawmedia.com. Click Connect to GitLab

Mail

Nextcloud has an excellent Mail application which we strongly recommend using for webmail access, instead of SOGo. You should set this up!

On the top bar of Nextcloud, click the icon for Mail. You will see the Connect your mail account page, which will be automatically filled in with your name and MousePaw Media email address. Enter your email password and click Connect.

Once your inbox loads, click the three dots next to your email address at left and select Account settings. Scroll down to Signature, and fill in your signature. We recommend this emplate:

Your Name Here
Position
MousePaw Media

Visit Us Online: MousePawMedia.com

Press Save signature to save.

Under Writing mode, select Rich text.

Dashboard

When you first visit Nextcloud, you will see the Dashboard, which provides notifications and links for the entire staff network.

By default, you’ll see the following boxes:

  • Welcome: an initial message providing a link to this documentation.

  • Announcements: important news from MousePaw Media administration.

  • Discourse notifications: notifications from our Discourse instance.

  • Unread mail: new messages from your email.

  • Upcoming cards: tasks with approaching deadlines from Nextcloud Deck.

  • GitLab To-Dos: pending code reviews and other tasks from GitLab.

  • Pending approvals: anything in Nextcloud awaiting your review.

  • Staff Portal: links to the rest of the staff network (also on the top bar).

Scroll to the bottom and click Customize to edit this Dashboard if you desire.

Note

If the weather is displaying in Celsius, and you want Fahrenheit, click your picture and select Personal settings. Change Locale to anything else, and then back to your locale, and the weather will display in the temperature scale used by your locale. (This is a bug in Nextcloud.)

Deck

The Deck application on Nextcloud is a task tracker. You can use it for just yourself, or you can share it with any other staff members at MousePaw Media.

Select a board under All boards, or create a new board with Add board. To share the board, click the three dots next to its name and click Board details; to rename, click Edit board.

You can customize the columns, and add, edit, and remove cards. To display the card on the Upcoming cards or the Dashboard, be sure to set a due date on the card. To do this, click the three dots on the card and select Card details.

Calendar

The Nextcloud calendar enables easy scheduling with colleagues. To use this application, click the icon for Calendar on the top bar of Nextcloud.

To schedule a new event, click the + Event button at left. If you want to invite other people, click More. Fill out all the fields you want. Click Attendees and type and click the names of staff members you want to invite, or email addresses if they’re not staff members. Click Show busy times to see everyone’s availability, to aid with finding good times for scheduling.

Importing External Calendars

To make scheduling easier, you should subscribe to any external calendars you routinely use for scheduling. This may include a personal calendar, a work calendar, or a school calendar.

  1. Get the public CalDAV/WebDAV/ICS URL of the external calendar you want to add. If you’re concerned about privacy, at least enable a public link that shows free/busy status without event details. (If you need help with this, contact your mentor.)

  2. In Nextcloud Calendar, click New Calendar and New subscription from link (read-only). Paste the link from step one and click the arrow.

  3. Hover over the calendar name in the list at left and click the pencil icon to edit the name and color.

  4. Click the color icon next to the calendar name to toggle its visibility. Others will still see your free/busy status when scheduling with you.

Important

Import your web calendars now.

Setting Office Hours

You may want to define office hours for yourself, which indicate when you are generally available for meetings. To do this, click your profile picture in the upper-right and click Personal settings. On the left, select Availability.

On that page, set your time zone, and add your working hours. Remember that this is only a general availability. Your calendar can be used to indicate specific times when you’re unavailable.

Also, check the box that says Automatically set user status to “Do not disturb”… to make it easier for colleages to determine whether you’re available or not.

Important

Set up your general availability.

Accessing via Calendar Client

If you use an external calendar application (and you should!), you can work directly with your MousePaw Media calendar via CalDAV or WebDAV.

If your calendar application supports CalDAV with authentication, use your private CalDAV link. In the Calendar appl, next to the calendar you want to access externally, click the pencil icon to edit the calendar. Next, click the clipboard icon to the right of Internal link. You will add this to your calendar application as a CalDAV source. You’ll next need to create an application password by clicking your profile photo, clicking Personal settings, and Security. At the bottom of that page, enter the name of your calendar application (for your personal reference) and click Create new app password. Use the username and password provided there to authenticate for your CalDAV calendar in your calendar application.

If your calendar application does not support authentication, use WebDAV instead. In the Calendar appl, next to the calendar you want to access externally, click the pencil icon to edit the calendar. Click the + button next to Share link. Click the three dots to the right of that row and click Copy subscription link. Use that link to subscribe to your public WebDAV calendar.

Important

Add your calendar to any external calendar apps you use. You can also susbcribe to your calendar in services like Outlook or Google Calendar.

Talk

For convenience, we’ve enabled the Talk application in Nextcloud, which allows you to create text-based chatrooms. This will eventually be integrated into our Mattermost instance (coming soon), or else disabled.

Nextcloud Client

If you’ll be using Nextcloud regularly, you may consider setting up the Nextcloud Client on your computer. See Download and install Nextcloud.

Regular Nextcloud Tasks

  • Read and response to emails in a timely fashion in Mail.

  • Schedule and RSVP for meetings in Calendar.

  • Manage your personal tasks in Deck.

  • Access shared files, including design assets.

  • Upload work. (Content Development, Design)

  • Review and proofread files. (Content Development, Design)

  • Access your library loans.

When you upload files meant to be shared, be sure to place them in the appropriate shared folder.

Employee Handbook

Our Employee Handbook outlines all the company policies, rules, and expectations for staff at MousePaw Media. You should be familiar with the latest version of these policies at all times.

We publish the latest version of the Employee Handbook on our Nextcloud, under the ECO directory.

Important

Download the latest copy of the Employee Handbook from that link, and save it to your work computer for quick reference. Read it through now.

You will be emailed whenever a new version of the Employee Handbook is published.

Next Steps

Previous MousePaw Media graduates have written up some tips for new interns! You can read those on Discourse at the link below:

Important

Read Tips for Interns

You can learn more about the different parts of the Staff Network in the other sections of this documentation.

Programmers should check out these sections next:

Content Developers should check out this section next:

Design+Production and Mass Communication staff should check out this section next: