The concept of user group means a discussion forum formed by two or more individuals (users) to exchange information, opinions, comments, thoughts about a particular issue, which is the topic of the particular group.

These user groups may be categorized by:

Ownership:

• Public (created and maintained by service provider)
• Private (created and maintained by a subscriber)

Membership:

• Open (any users may join the group)
• Restricted (only particular users may join the group)

A user may create a private user group at any time.

The values of the group properties are defined by the owner, or by group member(s) with sufficient access rights. Only Administrators may modify these property values. Each group may have the following properties:

Name: a string that is presented to the user as the name of the group. Default value is an empty string.

Accesstype:

• open (for everyone)
• restricted (members only). Default value is "open".

Type:

• public (maintained by service provider)
• private (maintained by individual user(s)).

PrivateMessaging:

• T (sending private messages is enabled)
• F (sending private messages is disabled). Default value is "F".

Searchable:

• T (the group is subject to search)
• F (the group is no included in searching). Default value is "F".

Topic: a string that describes the subject of discussion in the group. The topic is subject to searching if allowed. The default value is an empty string.

MaxActiveUsers: an integer number that indicates the maximum number of joined users at any given time. Default value is set by the group service.

WelcomeNote: a string that is presented as text to the user when he/she joins the group. The default value is an empty structure.

History:

• T (message history is supported)
• F (message history is not supported)
  If server supports the message history functionality, user/client can request it for a new or existing group.

Each user may have his/her own properties for each group individually. These properties include:

PrivateMessaging:

• T (sending private messages is enabled)
• F (sending private messages is disabled). Default value is "F"

AutoJoin

• T (serve r joins the client automatically to the particular group)
• F (server does not join client automatically to the particular group) Default value is "F" for every user in every group.