The users of Ares access the web Interface at http://<yourservername>/Ares/. There are options for authenticating users.
Students create an account by clicking the “Create Account” link on the logon page and filling out the form. Password Hints allow the user to give themselves a reminder if it is needed at future logons and Ares will not allow the user to actually type the password in that field. They can also choose if they want Auto Email subscription so they can be notified for all future classes when an item is posted in Ares. If they choose "Manual", they will still be able to choose email subscription on a class by class basis.
Once they enter in the information, they click the “Create Account” button.
Once the user logs into Ares, they are taken to the Main Menu where the classes they have added to their account (or the classes that instructors have already assigned to their User ID) are displayed. The student can use the “Student Tools” to add classes to their account.
My Hot List – The user normally views items by first clicking on a class then clicking on individual items. The Hot List allows the user to group those items that they might need to quickly access or access for more than one class. Adding items to the Hot List is done by first finding the item (see below) and clicking the Hot List checkbox and then the “Add checked items to Hot List” button.
Search Classes – The user can search for classes by Department, Instructor, or by Course. The user can use the Course Number, Class Name, or Class Code in searching by Course. Once the user finds the class they want to add from the list of Search Results, they only have to click the “Add Class” icon.
Search Items – The search for items is limited to the classes that have been assigned to the user’s Ares account. The User can search for an item by Course Number, Department, Class Code, Instructor, Title, and/or Author. The parameters for the text fields allow the choice between “Contains” and “Starts With” for narrowing the search further. There is also a checkbox that can be used to limit the search to items already on the Hot List.
Ares Tools – The user can change their account information, passwords, and they can also review the email that has been sent to them through the Ares system (if they use the Email Subscription option).
Student Class Tools - When looking at class details, the user can subscribe to receive email so they can be alerted when new items are added to a class. They just choose the "Subscribe Now" link.
The user can also remove a class from their account.
The RSS feed link can be used to receive the alert via the user's preferred news reader such as Bloglines or Newsgator. They can retrieve the link to use in the reader service by either right clicking on the RSS Feed heading and choosing Copy Shortcut or clicking on the link then copying the URL from the generated browser window.
Newly posted items will be displayed on the items list pages with an icon "New". Once viewed by the user, the icon changes to an Ares logo (Both icons can be customized). This feature allows the user to see what items they have looked at.
The user clicks on the item they want to view and they are taken to the Item detail page. If the item is hard copy, the Pickup Location will be displayed along with other relevant info about the item. If it is electronic, there will be a link that will allow the user to download or view the item (depending on Browser settings and file type of the item).