Collaboration Platform

Collaboration Platform

A collaboration platform is a category of business software that adds broad social networking capabilities to work processes. The goal of a collaboration software application is to foster innovation by incorporating knowledge management into business processes so employees can share information and solve business problems more efficiently. Vendors are taking different approaches to building collaboration platforms. Some are adding a “social layer” to legacy business applications while others are embedding collaboration tools into new products.

All enterprise successful collaboration platforms share certain attributes they need to be easily accessible and easy to use, they need to be built for integration and they need to come with a common set of functions that support team collaboration, issue tracking and messaging. Many collaboration platforms are designed to look like Facebook or other sites that employees are already accustomed to using in their personal lives. Collaborative software or groupware is an application software designed to help people involved in a common task to achieve goals. One of the earliest definitions of collaborative software is ‘intentional group processes plus software to support them.’

History of Collaboration Platform

Collaborative software is a broad concept that overlaps considerably with Computer- supported cooperative work (CSCW). Some authors argue they are equivalent. According to Carstensen and Schmidt (1999) groupware is part of CSCW. The authors claim that CSCW, and thereby groupware, addresses “how collaborative activities and their coordination can be supported by means of computer systems.” Software products such as email, calendaring, text chat, wiki, and bookmarking belong to this category whenever used for group work, whereas the more general term social software applies to systems used outside the workplace, for example, online dating services and social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. It has been suggested that Metcalfe’s law – the more people who use something, the more valuable it becomes applies to these types of software. The use of collaborative software in the work space creates a collaborative working environment (CWE).

A collaborative working environment supports people in both their individual and cooperative work thus evolving into a new class of professionals, e- professionals, who can work together irrespective of their geographical location. Finally, collaborative software relates to the notion of collaborative work systems, which are conceived as any form of human organization that emerges any tìme that collaboration takes place, whether it is formal or informal, intentional or unintentional. Whereas the groupware or collaborative software pertains to the technological elements of computer-supported cooperative work, collaborative work systems become a useful analytical tool to understand the behavioural and organizational variables that are associated to the broader concept of CSCW.

Groupware :

Collaborative software was originally designated as groupware and this term can be traced as far back as the late 1980s, when Richman and Slovak (1987) wrote: “Like an electronic sinew that binds teams together, the new groupware aims to place the computer squarely in the middle of communications among managers, technicians, and anyone else who interacts in groups, revolutionizing the way they work.” Even further back, in 1978 Peter and Trudy Johnson-Lenz coined the term groupware; their initial 1978 definition of groupware was, “intentional group processes plus software to support them.” Later in their article they went on to explain groupware as “computer- mediated culture… an embodiment of social organization in hyperspace.” Groupware integrates co-evolving human and tool systems, yet is simply a single system.

In the early 1990s the first commercial groupware products were delivered, and big companies such as Boeing and IBM started using electronic meeting systems for key internal projects. Lotus Notes appeared as a major example of that product category, allowing remote group collaboration when the internet was still in its infancy. If groupware really makes a difference in productivity long term, the very definition of an office may change. You will be able to work efficiently as a member of a group wherever you have your computer. As computers become smaller and more powerful, that will mean anywhere.

As collaborative software evolves and migrates onto the internet, it contributes to the development of the so-called Web 2.0 bringing a host of collaborative features that was originally conceived for within the corporate network. These include, amongst others, functionalities such as document sharing (including group editing), group calendar, instant messaging and web conferencing.

Groupware and Organizations:

The study of computer-supported collaboration includes the study of collaborative software and the social phenomena associated with it. There is a wealth of research produced about the impact of groupware in organizations and related social and psychological issues since the early eighties. Since 1984 the great majority of this work has been organized and communicated within the boundaries of a specialized scientific event – the Computer Supported Cooperative Work conferences – which are held by the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group in Computer-Human Interaction biannually.

Design and Implementation Issues in Collaboration Platform

The complexity of groupware development is still an issue. One reason for this is the Socio-technical dimension of groupware. Groupware designers do not only have to address technical issues (as in traditional software development) but also consider the social processes that should be supported with the groupware application. Some examples for issues in groupware development are:

• Persistence is needed in some sessions. Chat and voice communications are routinely non-persistent and evaporate at the end of the session. Virtual room and online file cabinets can persist for years. The designer of the collaborative space needs to consider the information duration needs and implement accordingly.
• Authentication has always been a problem with groupware. When connections are made point-to-point, or when log-in registration is enforced, it’s clear who is engaged in the session. However, audio and immoderate sessions carry the risk of unannounced ‘lurkers’ who observe but do not announce themselves or contribute.
• Until recently, bandwidth issues at fixed location limited full use of the tools. These are exacerbated with mobile devices.
• Multiple input and output streams bring concurrency issues into the groupware applications.
• Motivational issues are important, especially in settings where no pre-defined group process was in place.
• Closely related to the motivation aspect is the question of reciprocity. Ellis and others have shown that the distribution of efforts and benefits has to be carefully balanced in order to ensure that all required group members really participate.

One approach for addressing these issues is the use of design patterns for groupware design. The patterns identify recurring groupware design issues and discuss design choices in a way that all stakeholders can participate in the groupware development process.

Groupware and Levels of Collaboration:

Groupware can be divided into three categories depending on the level of collaboration:

1. Communication can be thought of as unstructured interchange of information. A phone call or an IM Chat discussion are examples of this.
2. Conferencing (or collaboration level, as it is called in the academic papers that discuss these levels) refers to interactive work toward a shared goal. Brainstorming or voting is examples of this.
3. Co-ordination refers to complex interdependent work toward a shared goal. A good metaphor for understanding this is to think about a sports team; everyone has to contribute the right play at the right time as well as adjust their play to the unfolding situation – but everyone is doing something different in order for the team to win. That is complex interdependent work toward a shared goal: collaborative management.

Electronic Communication Tools

Electronic communication tools send messages, files, data, or documents between people and hence facilitate the sharing of information. Examples include:

• synchronous conferencing
• asynchronous conferencing
• e-mail
• faxing
• voice mail
• Wikis
• Web publishing
• revision control

Electronic Conferencing Tools

Electronic conferencing tools facilitate the sharing of information, but in a more interactive way. Examples include:

• Internet forums (also known as message boards or discussion boards)-  A virtual discussion platform to facilitate and manage online text messages
• Online chat- a virtual discussion platform to facilitate and manage real-time text messages
• Instant Messaging
• Telephony- telephones allow users to interact
• Video conferencing- networked PCs share video and audio signals
• Data conferencing- networked PCs share a common whiteboard that each user can modify
• Application sharing- users can access a shared document or application from their respective computers simultaneously in real time
• Electronic meeting systems (EMS)- originally these were described as “electronic meeting systems,” and they were built into meeting rooms. These special purpose rooms usually contained video projectors interlinked with numerous PCs; however, electronic meeting systems have evolved into web-based, any time, any place systems that will accommodate “distributed” meeting participants who may be dispersed in several locations.

Collaborative Management (Coordination) Tools in Collaboration Platform

Collaborative management tools facilitate and manage group activities. Examples include:

• electronic calendars (also called time management software)- schedule events and automatically notify and remind group members.
• project management systems- schedule , track, and chart the steps in a project as it is being completed.
• online proofing-  share, review, approve, and reject web proofs, artwork, photos, or videos between designers, customers, and clients.
• workflow systems- collaborative management of tasks and documents within a knowledge-based business process.
• knowledge management systems- collect, organize, manage, and share various forms of information.
• enterprise bookmarking- collaborative bookmarking engine to tag, organize, share, and search enterprise data
• Prediction markets- let a group of people predict together the outcome of future events
• extranet systems (sometimes also known as ‘project extranets’)- collect, organize, manage and share information associated with the delivery of a project (e.g.: the construction of a building)
• social software systems- organize social relations of groups
• online spreadsheets – collaborate and share structured data and information
• client portals- interact and share with your clients in a private online environment

Gathering Applications

This functionality may be included in some wikis and blogs, For example: Wetpaint. Primarily includes:

• surveys
• project management
• feedback
• time tracking
• viewer restrictions

Wikis

Either stand-alone (such as MediaWiki), part of a suite (such as TikiWiki or Sakai,) or web-based (such as Wikipedia). A wiki typically includes wiki pages (shared/editable pages) and associations between pages. A Wiki might also include:

• workflow management
• page discussion/chat
• image and file galleries

Collaborative Software and Human Interaction for Collaboration Platform

The design intent of collaborative software (groupware) is to transform the way documents and rich media are shared in order to enable more effective team collaboration. Collaboration, with respect to information technology, seems to have several definitions. Some are defensible but others are so broad they lose any meaningful application. Understanding the differences in human interactions is necessary to ensure the appropriate technologies employ to meet interaction needs.

Human Interaction ways:

There are three primary ways in which humans interact:

• conversations
• Transactions
• collaborations.

1. Conversational interaction: It is an exchange of information between two or more participants where the primary purpose of the interaction is discovery or relationship building. There is no central entity around which the interaction revelves but is a free exchange of information with no defined constraints generally focused on personal experiences. Communication technology such as telephones, instant messaging, and e- mail are generally sufficient for conversational interactions.

2. Transactional interaction: It involves the exchange of transaction entities where a major function of the transaction entity is to alter the relationship between participants. The transaction entity is in a relatively stable form and constrains or defines the new relationship. One participant exchanges money for goods and becomes a customer. Transactional interactions most effectively handled by transactional systems that manage state and commit records for persistent storage.

3. Collaborative interactions: In collaborative interactions the main function of the participants’ relationship is to alter a collaboration entity (i.e., the converse of transactional). The collaboration entity is in a relatively unstable form. Examples include the development of an idea, the creation of a design, and the achievement of a shared goal. Therefore, real collaboration technologies deliver the functionality for many participants to augment a common deliverable. Record or document management, threaded discussions, audit history, and other mechanisms designed to capture the efforts of many into a managed content environment are typical of collaboration technologies.

Collaboration in Education

Two or more co-equal individuals voluntarily bring their knowledge and experiences together by interacting toward a common goal in the best interest of students’ needs for the betterment of their educational success. Collaboration platform requires individuals working together in a coordinated fashion, towards common goal. Accomplishing the goal is the primary purpose for bringing the team together. Collaborative software helps facilitate the action-oriented team working together over geographic distances by providing tools that help communication, collaboration and the process of problem solving by providing the team with a common means for communicating ideas and brainstorming. Additionally, collaborative software may support project management functions, such as task assignments, time-management with deadlines and shared calendars. The artefacts, the tangible evidence of the problem solving process, including the final outcome of the collaborative effort, typically require documentation and archiving of the process itself, and may involve archiving project plans, deadlines and deliverables.

Collaboration Platform Software

Collaborative software should support the individuals that make up the team and the interactions between them during the group decision making process. Many of today’s teams composed of members from around the globe, with some members using their second or third language in communicating with the group. This situation provides cultural as well as linguistic challenges for any software that supports the collaborative effort. The software may also support team membership, roles and responsibilities. Additionally, collaborative support systems may offer the ability to support ancillary systems, such as budgets and physical resources.

Brainstorming considered to be a tenet of collaboration, with the rapid exchange of ideas facilitating the group decision making process. Collaborative software provides areas that support multi-user editing, such as virtual whiteboards and chat or other forms of communication. Better solutions record the process and provide revision history. An emerging category of computer software, a collaboration platform is a unified electronic platform that supports synchronous and asynchronous communication through a variety of devices and channels. An extension of groupware is collaborative media, software that allows several concurrent users to create and manage information in a website. Collaborative media models include wiki (Comparison of wiki software) and Slashdot models. Some sites with publicly accessible content based on collaborative software are: WikiWikiWeb, Wikipedia and Everything.

By method used we can divide them into:

1. Web-based collaborative tools
2. Software collaborative tools

Along with these, already traditional, methods recent expansion of corporate use of Second Life and other virtual worlds led to development of a newer generation of software that takes advantage of a 3D data presentation. Some of this software (3D Topicscape) works independently from virtual worlds and simply uses 3D to support user “in concept creation, planning, organization, development and actualization”. Other designed specifically to assist in collaboration when using virtual worlds as a business platform, while vet another type of software. Collaborative Knowledge Management (CKM), bridges the cap and can used simultaneously in Second Life and on the web.

By area served we can divide collaborative software into:

• Knowledge management tools
• Knowledge creation tools
• Information sharing tools

Collaborative project management tools

Collaborative project management tools (CPMT) are very similar to collaborative management tools (CMT) except that CMT may only facilitate and manage a certain group activities for a part of a bigger project or task, while CPMT covers all detailed aspects of collaboration activities and management of the overall project and its related knowledge areas. Another major difference is that CMT may include social software, Document Management System (DMS) and Unified Communication (UC) while CPMT mostly considers business or corporate related goals with some kind of social boundaries most commonly used for project management.

Collaborative Project Management Tools (CPMT)	Collaborative Management Tools (CMT)
CPMT facilitate and manage social or group project based activities. Examples include:	In addition to most CPMT examples, CMT also includes:
Electronic calendars	HR and equipment management
Project management systems	Time and cost management
Resource Management	Online chat
Workflow systems	Instant messaging
Knowledge management	Telephony
Prediction markets	Video conferencing
Extranet systems	Web conferencing
Social software	Data conferencing
Online spreadsheets	Application sharing
Online artwork proofing, feedback, review and approval tool	Electronic meeting systems (EMS)
	Synchronous conferencing
	E-mail
	Faxing
	voice mail
	Wikis
	Web publishing
	Revision control
	Charting
	Document-centric collaboration
	Document retention
	Document sharing
	Document repository
	Evaluation and survey

Background of Collaboration Platform: 

During the mid-1990s project management started to evolve into collaborative project management; this was when the process in which a project’s inputs and outputs were carried out started to change with the evolution of the internet. Since the geographical boundaries broadened the development teams increasingly became more remote changing the dynamics of a project team thus changing the way a project was managed. Former chairman of General Electric, Jack Welch, believed that you could not be successful if you went it alone in a global economy. Therefore Welch became a driving force behind not only collaboration between organizations, but also collaborative project management.

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