The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a portal as a door or entrance—and this is what the Biblioso Portal is: an entrance into the business world of Biblioso Corporation. Our business world is comprised of documentation and localization projects and the Biblioso Portal is the primary means by which customers and service contributors access and collaborate on their projects.

Customers use the Biblioso Portal to create projects. A project typically consists of a project plan, document libraries, communication forums, style-sheet and glossary databases, issue-tracking systems, and more. A project manager is automatically assigned during the process or creating a project. This project manager determines the tasks required to accomplish the project and assigns an appropriate service contributor to each individual task. Service contributors then use the Biblioso Portal to accomplish their work, which usually means downloading files that they are supposed to process and uploading completed files.

All work tasks are maintained in a central project plan. The Biblioso Portal uses this project plan to automatically track progress as service contributors upload and download files. Because progress is tracked automatically, our project plans are always up to date. Customers and service contributors can access real-time project plan information through the Biblioso Portal. A variety of customized status reports are available to customers. Service contributors only see the status of their own work items.

The Biblioso portal provides many tools for decision makers, project managers, and service contributors to coordinate and manage projects. As such, it is a project management platform, a document management platform, a quality management platform, and a communications platform. The Biblioso Portal also includes the Biblioso Directory, an enterprise user and project management tool. The Biblioso Directory is only available to corporate accounts.

The Biblioso Directory is a systematically organized repository of resources such as organizational units, user accounts, groups, and projects that belong to a particular corporate customer. A corporate customer can assign one or multiple user accounts the right to manage the directory information. These administrators can create fully activated user accounts in the Biblioso Portal and grant these users permissions to create and work on projects. Because all user accounts fall under the contractual agreements between the corporate customer and Biblioso, no separate account activation step is necessary.

Among other things, the Biblioso Directory provides corporate customers with the following advantages:

• Centralized user account management based on organizational units and groups.
• Centralized project management in individual organizational units or across the entire organization.
• Project sponsor role can be delegated between corporate user accounts.
• Corporate accounts can participate in Biblioso projects as external contributors (such as an in-house author).

Biblioso uses industry-standard encryption technologies and safeguards to ensure your privacy and information security. Users are required to log on using their e-mail address and secure password before access to any project information or files is granted. Furthermore, your e-mail address and other identifying information are protected. We do not send unsolicited e-mails, sell, or trade your information.

While using the Biblioso Portal as a customer or service contributor, your information is kept secure by multiple features. Among other things, user sessions to the restricted area of the Biblioso Portal are strictly protected through encrypted Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) connections over Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). It is not possible to access the restricted area without SSL. In addition, hyperlinks to sensitive information contain encrypted user-specific keys that prevent other users from using these hyperlinks even if they were able to access your browser’s history list, and your account password is stored in encrypted form in our databases. Not even our system administrators can retrieve your password. If you forgot your account password, you must reset your account to generate a new password, which will be sent to your e-mail address automatically.

Creating a Biblioso account is the first step towards getting access to the restricted area of the Biblioso Portal as a customer or service contributor. Following this step, we will contact you through e-mail or phone to verify the account information provided, and will approve your account accordingly to grant you access.

There is no charge for creating a Biblioso account. While Biblioso does charge for documentation and localization services, the Biblioso Portal as a platform is generally available to customers and service contributors free. Only some portions of the portal, such as the Biblioso Directory, are subject to restrictions, separate contractual agreements, and licensing fees.

The Biblioso Portal uses certain dynamic or advanced features in order to provide you with an intuitive user interface. This is especially relevant for the protected area. You will not be able to access all information provided in the protected area if your browser does not support the following features nor has the corresponding options disabled:

• HTML Tables We use tables not only to display information intuitively, but we also use hidden table structures to implement the page layout for our Web pages. Almost all Web sites use invisible tables for layout purposes.
• JavaScript We use JavaScript to improve the design and dynamic behavior of our Web pages and to validate form input. JavaScript is the most widely used scripting language on the Internet.
• IFrames We use Inline Frames (IFrames) to include HyperText Markup Language (HTML) elements dynamically into our Web pages. Based on your selections on a Web page, a hidden IFrame can be used to fetch the data, which is then dynamically inserted into the Web page using JavaScript. The Biblioso Directory relies on this mechanism, for example.
• Hidden Text We use hidden text in the protected area of the Biblioso Portal to improve the design of our Web pages. Through JavaScript, hidden text sections are displayed based on the user's selection or cursor position. Dynamic context menus are based on hidden text, for example. Please note that we do not use hidden text to deceive or manipulate search engines.
• Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) We use SSL to encrypt sensitive data exchanged between your Web browser and our Web server. Many Internet sites use SSL to obtain confidential user information, such as social security or credit card numbers. You can verify the use of SSL by checking the URL of the Web page you are accessing. SSL-URLs start with https:// instead of http://.
• Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) We use CSS to define general styles and formatting elements for our Web pages. In a way, you can compare the styles defined in a cascading style sheet to the styles defined in a word-processing document. Instead of defining the styles in each document separately, the styles are defined once and then applied to the appropriate elements in each document. We use a particular CSS style, for example, to remove the underline from standard hyperlinks in all of our Web pages.
• Cookies We use cookies to identify your browser session on our Web server. A cookie is a small text file that a Web server stores on a client computer to keep track of certain information. The Biblioso Portal uses cookies to track account log on and access to the restricted portal area. Using JavaScript, we also dynamically keep track of state information regarding certain Web page elements. Many Web sites use cookies and they generally do not harm your computer.

Certain browsers support the dynamic and advanced features of the Biblioso Portal better than others do. Therefore, we have tested the public area of our portal with the most popular browsers to ensure a consistent Web presence. The following browsers work well with the public area of the Biblioso Portal (use the links provided to download the browsers listed):

• Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher Download this browser.
• Firefox 1.5 or higher Download this browser.
• Netscape Browser 8.0 Download this browser.
• Opera 8 Download this browser.

Due to the heavy use of JavaScript and dynamic Web page content, the restricted area of the Biblioso Portal requires Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher at present time. We are currently testing our Web pages with FireFox, Opera, and Netscape to support these browsers in the near future as well.

You might experience problems accessing the Biblioso Portal even if you are using one of the supported browsers. This will happen if your browser is not configured to support SSL, is located behind a firewall that blocks secure HTTP sessions, or has JavaScript, IFrames, or cookies disabled. To use all the features of the Biblioso Portal, you must enable all of these features in your browser options.
To display the browser options, follow these steps:

• Internet Explorer:  Click Tools. Click Internet Options.
• Netscape:  Click Edit. Click Preferences.
• Opera:  Click Tools. Click Preferences.
• Firefox:  Click on Tools. Click Options.

Note that you can quickly verify that JavaScript is enabled in your browser by checking the analog clock that we provide on all of our Web pages in the upper left corner. If you see this clock and if this clock is working, JavaScript is enabled.