dolaproject

DOLA (Directory of the Odiyas Living Abroad)

If you are a member of The Orissa Society of the Americas, you can access DOLA at http://www.orissasociety.org/DOLA/M/ . Otherwise, you may register as a non-member at  http://www.orissasociety.org/DOLA/NM/

HISTORY

   =============== Introduction to DOLA sent  in November, 2007 ================

Hereby I am reaching out to the non-resident Orissans who are away from India and at one time or another have shown, or potentially have, interest in the The Orissa Society of the Americas (OSA). As the Secretary of OSA (www.orissasociety.org), it is my pleasure to inform you that I have started formulating a project called “Directory of Odiyas Living Abroad (DOLA)” under the auspices of OSA.

DOLA is meant to gather, archive, and judiciously share non-private directory information among people of Orissa origin or interest, irrespective of their color, creed, gender or religion. Even those who do not speak Odiya but have a love for or special connection to Orissa, its land or culture or ethos are within its scope. You need not even be members of the Orissa Society of the Americas (however much we would like to have you as a member of OSA).

Several members and officials, past or present, of OSA have helped in providing data/whereabouts of many of you, so I can get a head-start building the project. I am trying to put together a safe, secure and convenient system backed up by the resilience and automation of a database and user-interface to bring the project to life.

DOLA is restricted to those who register into the system, thus an authentication mechanism and judicious listing of information will enable you to locate and connect with other Orissa people in case of need or mutual interest. It’s living because it will allow you to keep your information current and dynamic, and the membership in DOLA ever expanding. It also of course has the potential of being an enabling infrastructure for numerous other important issues of present or future .How many times have you wished you knew another friend or another Orissan when you visit a new place! All information is meant to be within OSA and DOLA framework but not for sale. It is planned such that a person/family can enter a new record of self in to the system, and even delete own record from the living database. They can update their own information as and when needed through an authenticated login process, etc.

This is an absolutely free service but DOLA members may donate to defray costs of this project. As I have stated, you do not need to be a member of OSA, but do visit the Membership area of www.orissasociety.org to find out the benefits you will receive, and the causes and aspirations you will support through your membership in OSA. If you do ever want to become a member of OSA, please send an email to our treasurer Mr. Dasverma at treasurer@orissasociety.org or visit the special, temporary promotion (discount and raffles) currently underway at http://orissasociety.org/osaftp0 /membership_main.htm .

In the next few days, I will send you a username and randomly generated password for yourself along with instructions to access the system being built. You will be able to register yourself and browse others. We have catalogued about 1800 persons/families. However, we don’t have emails of many of them. You may ask your Orissan friends to register themselves by using “anonymous” as username and “guest” as password. Only for those whose email we have, I will assign a username/password so you don’t have to reenter that information or new record into the database.  In the meanwhile, don’t hesitate to visit www.orissasociety.org or ask any of our volunteer officials a question or two that you may have.

Best Regards,

Priyadarsan

Dr. Priyadarsan Patra

Secretary of The Orissa Society of the Americas

http://Priyadarsan.patra.home.comcast.net

USAGE

 You can access the system at http://www.orissasociety.org/ by visiting the Member area (if you are a member of OSA) or the DOLA area on the left frame of the home page.

After you are logged, selecting MyOwnRecord in the list box will allow you to see your own record,  update it, change your password, etc. Also note that on the left most position of your record there are two icons. One is for editing/updating the other is for showing more details of your record. Please check out the drop-down menu which allows you to see several types of information (database): one is your personal record; another is a list of all OSA Members and NonMembers compiled under the DOLA project, etc.

1 records found  (Total records:1)

 

At the bottom you have the following menu items, mostly self-explanatory. One very useful one is Search – it lets you do smart search of records, remembers last search, etc. Note the "Change Password" item which allows to change your password.

DOLA and SpeakYourMind Systems of Dr. Priyadarsan Patra: All Rights Reserved.

If you select BrowseAll instead, it lets you view information about both OSA Members and Non-members – we may have to tweak what and what should not be shown in the future.

Registering for a new entry in the Directory (DOLA) requires you to sign in. To provide a missing email also  requires you to sign in.  If you don't have your own username/password assigned to you, sign with username “anonymous” and password “guest” . 

If Insert  link shows up along with the other links in red above, it will allow you to insert a record, i.e., register yourself in the system.  Please answer as many questions as thoroughly as possible. Once you have inserted a record, from then on, only you can edit/update it after authentication.

There are a number of people for whom we do not have Email, which is so crucial. So, we ask you to visit the Member area (if a Memer) or the DOLA area (if  not a member of OSA yet) to provide your email id. These accounts will then be verified and activated with our customary welcome message to you.

The list-item “NonMembers without Email” lets you see all people whose email id is missing from our database, so I would not have sent username, etc. to them. (NonMember is someone apparently not a member of OSA at this time.)  Similarly, Members who have not given us their Email Id can also provide their email, under the Member_Area menu.

FAQ (work in progress)

1. How do I login?  To login, click 'Member login' (on left menu panel) if you are an OSA Member and 'nonmember login' if you are not. Enter your username which is usually your firstname.lastname and password that you were given as default or you had changed later.

2. What if I lost my userid? Password?  Go to http://www.orissasociety.org/php_uploads/lost_passwd.php or click 'Lost userid or passwd' on the "DOLA System" menu on the left of OSA web page www.orissasociety.org.

3. What if I want to change my password? Go to http://www.orissasociety.org/php_uploads/change_passwd.php or click 'change password' on left panel of OSA web page.

4. How do I change my souvenir preference?

5. How do I express my and my family's special interests?

6. How do I volunteer given the great effort of you all the volunteers?

7. To see instructions for electronic voting, go to http://priyadarsan.patra.googlepages.com/speakyourmind

 

To browse the various sets of information, select the appropriate entry in the drop down menu. An example below illustrates the point.

2068 records found  (Total records:2068)

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The Directory of Odiyas Living Abroad (DOLA OSA Member Directory) Project by Dr. Priyadarsan Patra

The Speak Your Mind project

 

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