Please Select a Section:

Basics

o Getting Started
o Requesting a Contact
o Responding to a Request

Maximizing Results

o Managing Your Contacts
o Managing Your Credentials
o Managing Your Networks
o Managing Incoming Requests

Expanding Your Network

o Inviting Your Associates
o Creating a Network for Your Group

Basics: Getting Started

Installation

First, make sure that Interdex is not already installed on your machine. (Your system administrator may have installed the program already).

If Interdex is not presently installed, click the download link, and select 'Open' from current location.



The file you are downloading is over one megabyte, so it could take a few minutes before it is fully downloaded.



After Interdex is downloaded, it will automatically be installed on your computer. (Interdex requires .NET, which will be installed if necessary.) You will have to click the button "Next" a few times.



Creating an Account

If you do not already have an Interdex account, at the 'Log On' screen, select 'New Account'.



Next, provide the user ID and password you would like to use, along with a hint question (used to authorize e-mailing you a forgotten password).

Click 'Next', and provide your name, primary e-mail address, and other relevant details.

Click 'Next', and enter e-mail addresses provided to you by any organizations with which you are affiliated. (You will need to respond to a verification e-mail sent to each e-mail address you provide before Interdex adds you to the network relevant to this address's URL (web address, such as @site.edu). If you provide an e-mail address that corresponds to no presently available network, a new network will be created for the URL.)

Click 'Next', and enter the URL (web address) of any organization that has provided you with a password to its Interdex network. (You will be added to the relevant network immediately upon providing the password.)

Indexing Your Contacts

Interdex will automatically identify the people you know by indexing contacts from Microsoft Outlook. This information remains private, and under your complete control at all times. (The more people you know, the more powerful your network.) To begin this process, select the Outlook folders you wish Interdex to index, and click 'Extract Contacts'. This process can take a couple of minutes if you have a lot of contacts.

Look over the list of your contacts. If there are any contacts regarding which you do not wish to be contacted, select the relevant contact(s) and click 'Exclude'.

The 'Affinity' level indicates how frequently you correspond with the person through e-mail, and thus how likely you are to know them well.

When you are finished, click 'Proceed' to complete indexing and enter the main program.

Basics: Requesting a Contact

Click on the Search icon at the left of the main Interdex window.

Enter details regarding the target person or company, and click 'Search'.

Tip: It is useful to start with a single piece of information (such as last name), then add criteria as necessary to filter the results.)

Select a result from the list that corresponds to the relevant person or company, and click 'Send Request'.

Tip: If more than one result are relevant, select the relevant result with the highest listed 'Affinity' level, which indicates that this connection between the contact owner and the sought contact is strongest. (You may of course send a separate request for each relevant result.)

If this is the first time you have clicked 'Send Request', you will be asked

In the request window, enter information regarding your request:

(1) Enter a title for your request, along with a message indicating the specific nature of your request, and how you wish the owner of the contact to help you.

(2) Select the category and industry relevant to your request so that this information can be put at the fingertips of the recipient.

(3) Assign a priority value to the request (available on select networks only).

You can view requests you have sent in the past by selecting the 'Outgoing' icon and locating the request under the 'Outgoing Requests' heading.

Basics: Responding to a Request

You will receive requests from other Interdex users via regular e-mail. To respond to a request, open the attachment accompanying the e-mail, enter your reply message, and enclose any contacts you wish, using the box at the lower left corner of the reply window. Interdex will automatically send any contact you select as a vCard.

You can view responses you have sent in the past by selecting the 'Outgoing' icon and locating the request under the 'Outgoing Responses' heading.

To view contacts indexed from Outlook, click the 'Contacts' icon. You can exclude a contact from indexing by selecting the contact and clicking the 'Exclude' button. If you exclude a contact from your index, no user will be able to request this contact from you.

Interdex automatically excludes contacts with whom you communicate very rarely. To see these automatically excluded contacts, click the 'View Discarded' button. This button opens up a window that displays a list of valid contacts, and a list of discarded (automatically excluded) contacts. If you see contacts on your 'Discarded' list that you believe have been placed there incorrectly, you can validate these contacts by selecting them and clicking the 'Validate' button.

Maximizing Results: Managing Your Credentials

Credentials you provide will help motivate other users to respond to the requests you send to them. These credentials will be attached automatically to requests that you send.

To edit your credentials, click the 'Credentials' icon.

In the 'Professional Focus' section, you can provide the general industries in which you operate, or in which you have an interest.

In the 'Career and Education Dossier' section, you can provide any information you wish regarding your work educational background. Use the 'Career Summary' field to describe your career interests and goals.

Tip: An eye-catching summary title will encourage people to read about you.

Maximizing Results: Managing Your Networks

You can use Interdex to communicate with a wide variety of organizations simultaneously. For example, you may wish to use Interdex to locate contacts simultaneously among peers within your company, members of your college alumni association, and members of several trade groups to which you belong. You can do this easily, by telling Interdex the groups with which you want to communicate.

To designate the groups with which you want to exchange contacts, click the 'Account' icon, and select the groups with which you wish to communicate as follows:

In the list of 'Available Networks' at the right, select a network with which you wish to communicate, or type the network's website domain name (for example "yale.edu") into the field below the list. You will now choose whether to 'Link' to this network, or to 'Join' this network, as follows:

Linking to a Network
If you are not affiliated with this network's group (for example, you have selected the Stanford alumni network, and you are not a Stanford graduate), select 'Link to this Network'. Linking to a network allows you to communicate with only those members of the network who have themselves linked to a network of which you yourself are a member.

If you have selected 'Link to this Network', you will immediately be able to communicate with all members of this network who have themselves linked to a network of which you are a member. For example, if you link to the Stanford network, and you are a member of the Harvard network, you will communicate with those members of the Stanford network who have themselves linked to the Harvard network.

Joining a Network
If you are affiliated with this network's group (for example, you have selected the Harvard alumni network, and you are a Harvard graduate), select 'Join this Network'. Joining a network allows you to communicate with every member of the network.

If you have selected 'Join this Network', you will be asked to provide either an e-mail address located at a URL associated with the group you wish to join, or a network password (which may have been provided to you by the network's group). Interdex handles your response differently, depending on whether you provide an e-mail address or a password:

(1) If you provide an e-mail address, Interdex will send a validation e-mail to this address containing a link, which, when clicked, will authenticate you as a member of this network. You must wait until you are authenticated before you are able to communicate with other members of this group.

(2) If you provide a password, you will immediately be able to communicate with other members of the group. Note that not all networks have a password, but you can always join a network by providing a relevant e-mail address (such as one ending in yale.edu for the Yale University network).

Maximizing Results: Managing Incoming Requests

If you know a lot of people and talk to a large number of busy networks, you may find that the number of requests you receive exceeds the time you have available to respond to them. You can make the volume of requests you receive easier to manage in a few different ways:

Block Requests for Specific Contacts
To do this, select the 'Contacts' icon, right-click any specific contact regarding whom you do not wish to be contacted, and select the option 'Exclude'. Additionally, you can exclude groups of contacts by selecting the 'Block List' button, and entering specific terms that identify groups of contacts. For example, if you add '.gov' to your block list, all contacts who have a .gov e-mail address will be marked as 'excluded' from your index. You will no longer receive requests regarding them. You may also want to block specific company names, if you do not wish to receive requests for contacts at those companies. For example, if you add 'Techbiz' to your block list, you will never receive requests from other users for 'Techbiz' contacts in your index.

Limit the Networks with which You Communicate
To limit the number of people who can contact you, select the 'Access' icon, right-click networks in the 'My Networks' box with which you no longer wish to communicate, and select the option 'Remove'.

Limit the Frequency of Incoming Requests
Set Interdex to send incoming requests at an arranged time (such as once every Friday at 2 PM, for example), when you are not likely to be tied up with other issues. To do this, select the 'Preferences' icon, then select the 'Request Management' box. Switch the setting from Passive to Active Management, and select the frequency with which you wish to receive requests. Under Active Management, you will receive requests in a single e-mail message sent at the frequency you specify. Interdex will list these incoming requests in their predicted order of relevancy to you, so that you see the most interesting requests first. Thus you can spend as much or as little time as you have available to field requests while remaining confident that you have seen the most relevant requests available during any given interval.

If you run an organization that has a website, you can easily create an Interdex network that people associated with your site can use to talk to each other.

To create an Interdex network for your organization:

1) Select the 'Domain' icon, and then select 'Create Network'.

2) Enter the details about your website. If you do not know the 'Administrative Contact' e-mail address for your website, you can find it out by doing a whois search on your website (such as at http://registrar.godaddy.com/whois.asp, or http://www-whois.internic.net/cgi/whois for .edu addresses). You must provide the correct address, or your network will not be validated.

3) You will need to provide the password you select to any user you wish to invite to your network, who does not have an e-mail address that ends in your website's URL. (For example, if your website URL were infinidex.com, only users with an infinidex.com e-mail address, or users to whom you provide the network password, would be able to join the infinidex.com Interdex network.)

4) You can begin inviting people to your new network as soon as you have responded to the validation e-mail that Interdex sends to the administrative contact e-mail address that you have provided.