The Discuss application is a great way to communicate with friends and colleagues over the internet. Like online discussion boards, it has the immediacy of instance messaging combined with the permanency of email. People don't have to be logged online at the same time to see the discussion, and everyone can easily view all the posted messages, no matter when they were made.

Discussions are easy to create and initiate. In fact, their operation is identical to the document application, except the 'document' window is much smaller - the presumption is that you place a short opening statement in this window.

To start, choose the Discuss application and then the blue command "New Discussion" command. Select a folder to store the discussion in, and then you'll see the familiar document editor. Assign a Topic title to the Discussion and enter your opening text into the main document window.

Next, and very importantly, be sure to set the Share With controls so your friends and groups of friends will have access rights to the discussion (unless you've already set sharing at the folder level, which is always a good idea).

At this time you could give a Save and Exit command, but you might find it more powerful to choose the "Save and Email" button - which saves the discussion document but then gives you an easy way to send your friends an email with a link to the new discussion.

Once created, you and your friends can add messages to the discussion by choosing the "Add Message " button that appears at both the top and bottom of the discussion. Messages are appended in the order they were made, and each message is identified by the author's user name and the time and date.