1. Create directories
2. Download the Presentation
3. Install the Presentation
4. Run the Presentation

Steps to follow...

1. Create directories
   • When a presentation is installed on your computer, it should be placed in a specific directory. The recommended directory structure for WDTB presentations is:
     
     c:\lessons\COURSE\IC,
     
     where COURSE is the course name (i.e., AWOC or DLOC) or specific teletraining topic (i.e., RPGBuild5) in cases where teletraining is not part of a formal course and IC is the name of the instructional component (i.e., IC53-2, Svr4, etc.). Note, In the case of non-course teletraining, there is no IC subdirectory. Some examples are:
     
     1. c:\lessons\DLOCFY05\Orient - The DLOC orientation session
     2. c:\lessons\AWOC\Core3 - Learning from post-mortems session from AWOC Core Track IC 3, Lesson 3
     3. c:\lessons\RPGBuild5 - RPG Build 5 Training session

   • To make this process simpler for DLOC, we have created an MS-DOS batch file to create the required presentation directories for you. With other teletraining, it is recommended that you manually create the directory and then copy the presentation file to that directory for unzipping.

2. Download the Presentation
   • After creating your directory structure, download the presentation files that you need. For a formal course, that entails downloading all of the presentations for each IC that has teletraining in that course. You can access these presentations from the main page for each course or topic.

   • It is suggested that you put the presentation files in the previously created directories when you download them. This makes it much easier in the next step.

3. Install the Presentation
   • To install the presentations, simply execute each "exe" file you just downloaded. When you execute them, you will see a dialog box that looks like this:
     

     Note that the "Target Directory" defaults to the current directory ("orient" in this example, since we're extracting the orientation presentation).

   • This is just what we want, so press the "Extract" button. A large number of files will be extracted into this directory. Luckily, there are only a very few files that we need to be concerned with.

4. Setting Up Your PC
   • Setting up your PC is even easier than before...
   • Minimum PC Requirements: 500 MHz CPU, More than 64 MB RAM, 60 MB hard drive space available.
   • Screen Resolution: It is best to use a screen resolution of 1280 x 1024 pixels. In general, the graphics in WDTB VisitView presentations will be 800 x 600 pixels. Some presentations will be 1024 x 768 pixels, especially if they rely heavily on graphics from AWIPS. If you choose to use a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels for a presentation with larger graphics, you will be unable to advance slides in visitlocal (backup) mode.
   • NO Additional PROGRAMS Running! VISITview will perform best if you close all programs before starting VISITview.

5. Run the Presentation
   • Running the VISITview presentation is as simple as executing a DOS batch file. There are four files that you need to be familiar with as a student. The file choice is dependent on the server in use:
     • visit.bat - connects to the ROC server. This is the default file. Use this file unless otherwise instructed. When you run visit.bat, you will see a sign in dialog box:

       Be sure to enter your 3-letter office identifier as your "user id".

     • visitlocal.bat - Use this during the lesson only when you have lost connectivity and your instructor gives you permission. You will be able to run the lesson locally but you will not see any annotations from the class and you will need to manually advance the pages.

   • If, for some reason, the ROC VISITview server is not functioning, your instructor may ask you to switch to a different server. To do this, simply execute the batch file your instructor asks you to when in the teletraining session. (You close the current VISITview client, and run the desired batch file.) Here are the other batch files for running on a different server:
     • visit-cira.bat - a backup file that connects to a server at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) in Colorado State University.
     • visit-cimss.bat - a backup file that connects to a server at the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) in the University of Wisconsin.

6. Pre-Session Events A few things must be accomplished to ensure a smooth teletraining session:
   1. Download and install the presentation (see above).
   2. Set up your computer.
   3. Close all programs.
   4. Your speaker phone should be near your PC.
   5. Check your email on the Thursday the week prior to the session. WDTB will be sending out an email describing the procedures for the telephone conference call!
   6. 15 Minutes prior to the conference, dial into the telephone conference call.
   7. Start visit.bat and sign in with your office identifier.
   8. Your instructor will give you more detailed instructions if the ROC VISITview server is down.

Try it out...