The Need For Collaborative Software
Posted on | January 9, 2010 | No Comments
During the Twentieth century businesses focused on improving process efficiency to reduce costs and increase productivity. Organization’s are now looking for ways to improve the effectiveness of their knowledge workers as well. Most of the professionals joining the workplace today have been familiar with personal computers their entire lives. These workers are dependent on the use of modern communication technologies. One of the problems that professionals face is inaccessibility to important documents. Like traditional office file systems, electronic data also becomes scattered throughout the organization. Workers store their documents in many different places. For collaborating workers, this means time spent looking for the information they need. For IT staff, this makes it difficult to backup all of an organization’s documents. Customer’s are also affected by increased wait time or an inability to find their documents altogether. Disturbingly, there has been little development in increasing the collaborative effort1.
Collaboration in the Workplace
Traditionally, collaboration meant “to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor.”2 For this discussion, collaboration refers to work done as a group of peers with a specific goal in mind. At the beginning of the collaborative effort, there may not be a well defined itinerary. Rather, the group members work together to control the direction that the group takes. Individuals performing in this environment help to accomplish tasks both by themselves and with others in the group. Each member of the group contributes to planning and completion of the task. The unique nature of business collaboration imposes new requirements for information systems.
Collaborative Needs
File Management
In the work environment the many documents that are stored on the computers are shared with other members of an organization. There are also other documents, such as payroll records, that fewer members must have access to. Some documents, such as application settings, incomplete projects, or calendars may not need to be shared at all. This raises several issues that must be handled for effective collaborative document management. The first is the issue of managing file versions on multiple machines. Important documents must also be accessible in a transparent way for both system administrators and end users.
Accessibility
Mobile workers require access to their personal documents from a variety of locations, as well as in the traditional office. Documents such as calendars, to-do lists, contact lists, notes, and email overlap work and personal life. Due to the insecure nature of network communication, data integrity and privacy measures need to be taken. Collaborative systems should supply a method of making these important documents accessible from a variety of locations in a secure manner.
Multi-platform
These systems should also be multi-platform and browser-agnostic in order to accommodate all members of an organization. A group-oriented systems goal is “to maintain a higher level of knowledge entropy that can eventually lead to increase in new ideas.”3 Higher numbers of telecommuters and other distance workers also causes another hurdle for group effort: the dynamic of interpersonal relationships. While social networking websites have expanded rapidly, groupware applications in the workplace lack effective relationship building tools.
Communication
Many different methods of communication take place in the work environment. Since email is the primary internal correspondence on many projects, these attachments are usually available on the organization’s network. Emails work well for communication but are not as effective for the collaborative management of files.4 Email is also used to keep track of tasks, assign projects, and change deadlines. It is directly related to calendaring, time management, and project management. The importance of email to the management and teamwork processes calls for an improved way of managing them in the workplace.
In short, the primary requirements for an exceptional collaborative system in the workplace are effective communication, accessibility, and tools to organize and share documents in a meaningful way. Among populations in the US, university and college students have the highest adoption rates of groupware and collaborative softwares.5 This is a strong indicator that new professionals will be comfortable and dependent on these software, such as Blackboard, to manage their busy lives.
How Are These Needs Fulfilled?
Communication : Wiki’s
There are several different types of collaborative software that are used to manage these functions of an organization. Wikis were first developed as WikiWikiWeb on March 25, 1995 as a way for users to “comment on and change one another’s text.”6 Wikis allow many users to view and edit the same documents with no special software other than a web browser. Allowing many users to edit a document greatly enhances both the quality and quantity of work produced by a group. Wikis supply tools for groups to make developing intellectual work easier. Change logs are implemented in wiki systems to track which users change which parts of the document. Recent changes are posted to a “Recent Changes” page in a format that makes it easy to see where the changes in a document occurred. Changes are left in the Recent Changes page until they have been approved by the wiki board or management. The most popular example of a successful wiki system is Wikipedia. Organizations like MediaWiki provide free wiki software that can be downloaded and installed on any PHP capable web server. Google Sites offers free wiki pages that are hosted by Google. Other companies such as Confluence offer wiki services at a fee and offer Share Point integration and the capability to edit Microsoft Word documents in the browser.
Communication : Email
The open format of wikis and their ability to facilitate the development of ideas make them an important part of the collaborative effort. Wikis are missing the capability to calendar, manage tasks, and organize emails. These functions are handled as separate components of an organization’s infrastructure. Microsoft’s Exchange software provides extensive capabilities in this area, and is commonly deployed in organization’s that rely on Microsoft products. Exchange allows its users to share calendars, tasks, and contacts. It’s primary use is to function as a mail server and allow users access to shared documents that are managed by it. This software integrates very well with other commonly used Microsoft products like Outlook, Entourage, and Share Point. For groups running UNIX networks, Exchange is not a viable option. Organizations will usually choose an LDAP based system when Exchange is not an option. LDAP requires good working knowledge of network management to implement. In house systems like LDAP or Exchange can be difficult to implement in an already existing network. Online solutions like Google and Yahoo offer calendaring and contact management services that integrate into their email systems. Many on-line solutions for email and contact management are free of charge. Higher end services might offer backups, no advertisements, and a better selection of addresses. These solutions are limited by their separation from other documents within an organization.
File Concurrency
Early models of document sharing made use of a dedicated file server. The file server could be used as a repository for shared data, and could verify user’s information. As workers began to collaborate on projects, the file simple user-based management caused inconsistent organization. Asynchronous file management involves systems such as email and file servers. In asynchronous systems, different versions of documents are spread to different people. Since files and folders are managed differently by each user, projects involving several team members quickly become disorganized.
Synchronous file management was developed to handle concurrency issues in multi-user documents. In a one-way sync system, files are copied from one location to another, but no files are transferred to the original location. A two-way system copies are kept up-to-date in both locations.7 Sync systems are provided by software that is run independently from the file server software.
One of the most common forms of synchronous file sharing is a check-in—check-out system. When a user is editing a document, he or she “checks out” the file. At it’s simplest level, users communicate directly to decide who will edit the document and when. More complex systems monitor the files automatically and will supply a read-only version to others. Software like Microsoft Access create a hidden lock file while a database is being edited. The lock file will be deleted once the file is no longer being edited. During the check out time, no other users are allowed access to the database. Version control systems (aka revision control, source control, code management) are a further improvement on synchronous file management.8 They work in conjunction with the check-in—check-out systems and provide a method of tracking changes in documents.
File Transparency and Accessibility
User transparency is typically managed using a directory service. Directory services store, organize and provide access to information in a directory.9 The first directory service implementation was Domain Name Services (DNS), and is still in use today. Servers usually provide several methods of user authentication. Microsoft Active Directory (AD) is usually deployed in Microsoft based organizations. Nearly all other operating platforms use LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) based software to manage access to their data, including Mac OS X Server’s Open Directory. When users access a directory server, they may be accessing resource from any machine within the directory server’s domain. The user has little or no knowledge about the actual whereabouts of the resources that they are using. Both of these services also support Kerberos to provide a single login for all resources controlled by the directory server. In the LDAP system, everything is considered an object. This could be a user, group, print service, directories, or any other type of resource controlled by the directory server. Objects may also contain other objects or data, much like a traditional file system. The flexibility of this organization scheme allows system administrators to quickly modify large groups of resources.10 Directory servers can be expanded and connected to other directory servers to provide additional resources.
Putting Them All Together
A new class of application termed “collaborative software” aims to combine all of these functionalities from a single interface. Collaborative software differs greatly in the number of tools that it provides, as well as the way it is obtained. Extensively featured systems like Oracle Beehive have tools in the following areas: Team Workspaces, Documents, Email, Calendar, Tasks, Instant Messaging, Presence, Conferencing, Mobile Access, Voicemail, and Telephony.11 This software can be distributed using the client-server model, SaaS model, web interface, or as a peer-to-peer application.
Microsoft’s has a couple collaborative softwares. Groove is a P2P software that focuses on providing shared workspaces to its users. With Groove, users each have their own private copy of the workspace they’re working on. The Groove server watches these workspaces for changes and notifies other participants in the workspace of the changes. If a user is off-line, the server keeps a change log and sends it to users when they are reconnected to the network. Groove’s functionality can be expanded by installing “Tools”. With enough tools, Groove is capable of supplying all of the functions that Oracle’s Beehive does.
Free open source solutions offer a bit less in functionality than corporate sponsored solutions. There are some unique solutions that stand out, such as OpenGoo. OpenGoo is a web based solution that can manage notes, email, contacts, calendars, documents, tasks, and time management. All of these things are considered objects. Each user can have private workspaces or public workspaces, and each workspace can have sub-spaces. Objects can be placed into workspaces. OpenGoo also allows users to “tag” an item with keywords that can be used to filter documents. Objects can also be linked to each other, allowing users to effectively organize their documents.
Other solutions are available as SaaS applications that run on the Internet cloud. Some of these applications are open source. FengOffice is the company that maintains the OpenGoo source code, but its customers have 24/7 support and custom components can be added added to their software. Sun Microsystems maintains O3spaces which adds collaborative document management to their OpenOffice.org software. They also supply an email client and version management.
Future Development
With collaborative software, users are able to quickly share information. Instead of a sending an email with details about where a document is located, users know where to find the file because it is already organized. Users can better utilize their time to increase the productivity of the business. Management can reduce the number of meeting that need to be held since each person on the system can see the progress of their team members. Managers can also make well informed decisions about team scheduling and performance. IT professionals have a way to easily locate and backup all of their companies important files and less software to maintain. Customers benefit from this combination of tool by having shorter project completion times, higher quality products, and faster responses to their needs.
In large organizations, collaborative software is evolving to become more integrated with social sites like Facebook and Twitter. This next generation of tools is termed “Enterprise 2.0”12. Enterprise 2.0 aims to reduce the subjective distance of the members involved in a group. Applications that are usually used to accomplish this include instant messaging, blogging, and teleconferencing, in addition to all of the collaborative components. Companies that have telecommuting employees are beginning to realize the potential for improvement in this area. The E2 Conference is an electronic conference that will be held February 2, 2010. Organizations such as IBM will be discussing how E2.0 software can improve workplace efficiency. The increased flow of information improves seamless team work to achieve common goals regardless of the distance between members.
Appendix A : Software Tested
24SevenOffice—http://24sevenoffice.com/webpage/int/
Aras Corp—http://www.aras.com/
Assembla—http://www.assembla.com/
Basecamp—http://basecamphq.com/
Codendi—http://www.codendi.com/index_en.php
Collabtive—http://collabtive.o-dyn.de/
dotProject—http://www.dotproject.net/
eGroupWare—http://www.egroupware.org/
FastTrack Schedule—http://www.aecsoftware.com/
Genius Inside—http://www.geniusinside.com/
Hyperoffice—http://www.hyperoffice.com/
Kforge—http://www.kforgeproject.com/
Launchpad—http://www.launchpad.net/
MacProject—http://www.sharedplan.com/macproject.html/4
Microsoft Entourage—http://www.microsoft.com/
Microsoft Groove—http://www.microsoft.com/
Microsoft Outlook—http://www.microsoft.com/
Microsoft Project—http://www.microsoft.com/
Microsoft SharePoint—http://www.microsoft.com/
O3spaces—http://o3spaces.org/
OmniPlan—http://www.omnigroup.com/
OpenGoo—http://www.fengoffice.org/
Oracle Beehive—http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/beehive/index.html
Project.net—http://project.net/
ProjectPier—http://www.projectpier.org/
Projectplace—http://www.projectplace.org/
Redmine—http://www.redmine.org/
SharpForge (Defunct)—http://www.codeplex.com/SharpForge
TaskJuggler—http://www.taskjuggler.org/
Teamcenter—http://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en_us/products/teamcenter/
Teamwork—http://www.teamworklive.com/
Trac—http://trac.edgewall.org/
TrackerSuite.Net—http://trackersuite.net/
WorkPLAN Enterprise—http://www.workplan-enterprise.com/us/
workspace.com—http://workspace.com/
Wrike—http://www.wrike.com/
Zoho Projects—http://projects.zoho.com/home.na
1 “Shared Workspace and Group Blogging Experimentation through a Living Lab approach”, Samier, Henri; Richir, Simon; Pallot, Marc
2“Collaborative Tools Strategy Task Force Report”, University of Washington, November 21, 2008
3“Virtual and Augmented Reality Supporting Group Consciousness within Collaborative Working Environments”,Antoniac, Peter; Pallot, Marc; and Pulli, Petri
4Ibid.
5“New Horizons: The Rise of Collaborative Tools”, Klingenstein, Ken
6“Wiki History”, Cunningham, Ward
7http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/What-is-the-difference-between-one-way-and-two-way-sync, Accessed 12/01/2009
8Version Control with Subversion, O’Reilly Media. http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.5/index.html Accessed 12/02/09
9“Directory Service”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directory_server Accessed 12/02/09
10Hands-On Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Palmer, Michael
11Testing of 37 collaborative software suites. See list of software tested in Appendix A
12http://www.e2conf.com/, Accessed December 2, 2009
During the Twentieth century businesses focused on improving process efficiency to reduce costs and increase productivity. Organization’s are now looking for ways to improve the effectiveness of their knowledge workers as well. Most of the professionals joining the workplace today have been familiar with personal computers their entire lives. These workers are dependent on the use of modern communication technologies. One of the problems that professionals face is inaccessibility to important documents. Like traditional office file systems, electronic data also becomes scattered throughout the organization. Workers store their documents in many different places. For collaborating workers, this means time spent looking for the information they need. For IT staff, this makes it difficult to backup all of an organization’s documents. Customer’s are also affected by increased wait time or an inability to find their documents altogether. Disturbingly, there has been little development in increasing the collaborative effort1.
Collaboration in the Workplace
Traditionally, collaboration meant “to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor.”2 For this discussion, collaboration refers to work done as a group of peers with a specific goal in mind. At the beginning of the collaborative effort, there may not be a well defined itinerary. Rather, the group members work together to control the direction that the group takes. Individuals performing in this environment help to accomplish tasks both by themselves and with others in the group. Each member of the group contributes to planning and completion of the task. The unique nature of business collaboration imposes new requirements for information systems.
Collaborative Needs
File Management
In the work environment the many documents that are stored on the computers are shared with other members of an organization. There are also other documents, such as payroll records, that fewer members must have access to. Some documents, such as application settings, incomplete projects, or calendars may not need to be shared at all. This raises several issues that must be handled for effective collaborative document management. The first is the issue of managing file versions on multiple machines. Important documents must also be accessible in a transparent way for both system administrators and end users.
Accessibility
Mobile workers require access to their personal documents from a variety of locations, as well as in the traditional office. Documents such as calendars, to-do lists, contact lists, notes, and email overlap work and personal life. Due to the insecure nature of network communication, data integrity and privacy measures need to be taken. Collaborative systems should supply a method of making these important documents accessible from a variety of locations in a secure manner.
Multi-platform
These systems should also be multi-platform and browser-agnostic in order to accommodate all members of an organization. A group-oriented systems goal is “to maintain a higher level of knowledge entropy that can eventually lead to increase in new ideas.”3 Higher numbers of telecommuters and other distance workers also causes another hurdle for group effort: the dynamic of interpersonal relationships. While social networking websites have expanded rapidly, groupware applications in the workplace lack effective relationship building tools.
Communication
Many different methods of communication take place in the work environment. Since email is the primary internal correspondence on many projects, these attachments are usually available on the organization’s network. Emails work well for communication but are not as effective for the collaborative management of files.4 Email is also used to keep track of tasks, assign projects, and change deadlines. It is directly related to calendaring, time management, and project management. The importance of email to the management and teamwork processes calls for an improved way of managing them in the workplace.
In short, the primary requirements for an exceptional collaborative system in the workplace are effective communication, accessibility, and tools to organize and share documents in a meaningful way. Among populations in the US, university and college students have the highest adoption rates of groupware and collaborative softwares.5 This is a strong indicator that new professionals will be comfortable and dependent on these software, such as Blackboard, to manage their busy lives.
How Are These Needs Fulfilled?
Communication : Wiki’s
There are several different types of collaborative software that are used to manage these functions of an organization. Wikis were first developed as WikiWikiWeb on March 25, 1995 as a way for users to “comment on and change one another’s text.”6 Wikis allow many users to view and edit the same documents with no special software other than a web browser. Allowing many users to edit a document greatly enhances both the quality and quantity of work produced by a group. Wikis supply tools for groups to make developing intellectual work easier. Change logs are implemented in wiki systems to track which users change which parts of the document. Recent changes are posted to a “Recent Changes” page in a format that makes it easy to see where the changes in a document occurred. Changes are left in the Recent Changes page until they have been approved by the wiki board or management. The most popular example of a successful wiki system is Wikipedia. Organizations like MediaWiki provide free wiki software that can be downloaded and installed on any PHP capable web server. Google Sites offers free wiki pages that are hosted by Google. Other companies such as Confluence offer wiki services at a fee and offer Share Point integration and the capability to edit Microsoft Word documents in the browser.
Communication : Email
The open format of wikis and their ability to facilitate the development of ideas make them an important part of the collaborative effort. Wikis are missing the capability to calendar, manage tasks, and organize emails. These functions are handled as separate components of an organization’s infrastructure. Microsoft’s Exchange software provides extensive capabilities in this area, and is commonly deployed in organization’s that rely on Microsoft products. Exchange allows its users to share calendars, tasks, and contacts. It’s primary use is to function as a mail server and allow users access to shared documents that are managed by it. This software integrates very well with other commonly used Microsoft products like Outlook, Entourage, and Share Point. For groups running UNIX networks, Exchange is not a viable option. Organizations will usually choose an LDAP based system when Exchange is not an option. LDAP requires good working knowledge of network management to implement. In house systems like LDAP or Exchange can be difficult to implement in an already existing network. Online solutions like Google and Yahoo offer calendaring and contact management services that integrate into their email systems. Many on-line solutions for email and contact management are free of charge. Higher end services might offer backups, no advertisements, and a better selection of addresses. These solutions are limited by their separation from other documents within an organization.
File Concurrency
Early models of document sharing made use of a dedicated file server. The file server could be used as a repository for shared data, and could verify user’s information. As workers began to collaborate on projects, the file simple user-based management caused inconsistent organization. Asynchronous file management involves systems such as email and file servers. In asynchronous systems, different versions of documents are spread to different people. Since files and folders are managed differently by each user, projects involving several team members quickly become disorganized.
Synchronous file management was developed to handle concurrency issues in multi-user documents. In a one-way sync system, files are copied from one location to another, but no files are transferred to the original location. A two-way system copies are kept up-to-date in both locations.7 Sync systems are provided by software that is run independently from the file server software.
One of the most common forms of synchronous file sharing is a check-in—check-out system. When a user is editing a document, he or she “checks out” the file. At it’s simplest level, users communicate directly to decide who will edit the document and when. More complex systems monitor the files automatically and will supply a read-only version to others. Software like Microsoft Access create a hidden lock file while a database is being edited. The lock file will be deleted once the file is no longer being edited. During the check out time, no other users are allowed access to the database. Version control systems (aka revision control, source control, code management) are a further improvement on synchronous file management.8 They work in conjunction with the check-in—check-out systems and provide a method of tracking changes in documents.
File Transparency and Accessibility
User transparency is typically managed using a directory service. Directory services store, organize and provide access to information in a directory.9 The first directory service implementation was Domain Name Services (DNS), and is still in use today. Servers usually provide several methods of user authentication. Microsoft Active Directory (AD) is usually deployed in Microsoft based organizations. Nearly all other operating platforms use LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) based software to manage access to their data, including Mac OS X Server’s Open Directory. When users access a directory server, they may be accessing resource from any machine within the directory server’s domain. The user has little or no knowledge about the actual whereabouts of the resources that they are using. Both of these services also support Kerberos to provide a single login for all resources controlled by the directory server. In the LDAP system, everything is considered an object. This could be a user, group, print service, directories, or any other type of resource controlled by the directory server. Objects may also contain other objects or data, much like a traditional file system. The flexibility of this organization scheme allows system administrators to quickly modify large groups of resources.10 Directory servers can be expanded and connected to other directory servers to provide additional resources.
Putting Them All Together
A new class of application termed “collaborative software” aims to combine all of these functionalities from a single interface. Collaborative software differs greatly in the number of tools that it provides, as well as the way it is obtained. Extensively featured systems like Oracle Beehive have tools in the following areas: Team Workspaces, Documents, Email, Calendar, Tasks, Instant Messaging, Presence, Conferencing, Mobile Access, Voicemail, and Telephony.11 This software can be distributed using the client-server model, SaaS model, web interface, or as a peer-to-peer application.
Microsoft’s has a couple collaborative softwares. Groove is a P2P software that focuses on providing shared workspaces to its users. With Groove, users each have their own private copy of the workspace they’re working on. The Groove server watches these workspaces for changes and notifies other participants in the workspace of the changes. If a user is off-line, the server keeps a change log and sends it to users when they are reconnected to the network. Groove’s functionality can be expanded by installing “Tools”. With enough tools, Groove is capable of supplying all of the functions that Oracle’s Beehive does.
Free open source solutions offer a bit less in functionality than corporate sponsored solutions. There are some unique solutions that stand out, such as OpenGoo. OpenGoo is a web based solution that can manage notes, email, contacts, calendars, documents, tasks, and time management. All of these things are considered objects. Each user can have private workspaces or public workspaces, and each workspace can have sub-spaces. Objects can be placed into workspaces. OpenGoo also allows users to “tag” an item with keywords that can be used to filter documents. Objects can also be linked to each other, allowing users to effectively organize their documents.
Other solutions are available as SaaS applications that run on the Internet cloud. Some of these applications are open source. FengOffice is the company that maintains the OpenGoo source code, but its customers have 24/7 support and custom components can be added added to their software. Sun Microsystems maintains O3spaces which adds collaborative document management to their OpenOffice.org software. They also supply an email client and version management.
Future Development
With collaborative software, users are able to quickly share information. Instead of a sending an email with details about where a document is located, users know where to find the file because it is already organized. Users can better utilize their time to increase the productivity of the business. Management can reduce the number of meeting that need to be held since each person on the system can see the progress of their team members. Managers can also make well informed decisions about team scheduling and performance. IT professionals have a way to easily locate and backup all of their companies important files and less software to maintain. Customers benefit from this combination of tool by having shorter project completion times, higher quality products, and faster responses to their needs.
In large organizations, collaborative software is evolving to become more integrated with social sites like Facebook and Twitter. This next generation of tools is termed “Enterprise 2.0”12. Enterprise 2.0 aims to reduce the subjective distance of the members involved in a group. Applications that are usually used to accomplish this include instant messaging, blogging, and teleconferencing, in addition to all of the collaborative components. Companies that have telecommuting employees are beginning to realize the potential for improvement in this area. The E2 Conference is an electronic conference that will be held February 2, 2010. Organizations such as IBM will be discussing how E2.0 software can improve workplace efficiency. The increased flow of information improves seamless team work to achieve common goals regardless of the distance between members.
Appendix A : Software Tested
24SevenOffice—http://24sevenoffice.com/webpage/int/
Aras Corp—http://www.aras.com/
Assembla—http://www.assembla.com/
Basecamp—http://basecamphq.com/
Codendi—http://www.codendi.com/index_en.php
Collabtive—http://collabtive.o-dyn.de/
dotProject—http://www.dotproject.net/
eGroupWare—http://www.egroupware.org/
FastTrack Schedule—http://www.aecsoftware.com/
Genius Inside—http://www.geniusinside.com/
Hyperoffice—http://www.hyperoffice.com/
Kforge—http://www.kforgeproject.com/
Launchpad—http://www.launchpad.net/
MacProject—http://www.sharedplan.com/macproject.html/
Microsoft Entourage—6 months use
Microsoft Groove—http://www.microsoft.com/
Microsoft Outlook—http://www.microsoft.com/
Microsoft Project—http://www.microsoft.com/
Microsoft SharePoint—http://www.microsoft.com/
O3spaces—http://o3spaces.org/
OmniPlan—http://www.omnigroup.com/
OpenGoo—1 year use
Oracle Beehive—http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/beehive/index.html
Project.net—http://project.net/
ProjectPier—http://www.projectpier.org/
Projectplace—http://www.projectplace.org/
Redmine—http://www.redmine.org/
SharpForge (Defunct)—http://www.codeplex.com/SharpForge
TaskJuggler—http://www.taskjuggler.org/
Teamcenter—http://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en_us/products/teamcenter/
Teamwork—http://www.teamworklive.com/
Trac—http://trac.edgewall.org/
TrackerSuite.Net—http://trackersuite.net/
WorkPLAN Enterprise—http://www.workplan-enterprise.com/us/
workspace.com—http://workspace.com/
Wrike—http://www.wrike.com/
Zoho Projects—http://projects.zoho.com/home.na
1 “Shared Workspace and Group Blogging Experimentation through a Living Lab approach”, Samier, Henri; Richir, Simon; Pallot, Marc
2“Collaborative Tools Strategy Task Force Report”, University of Washington, November 21, 2008
3“Virtual and Augmented Reality Supporting Group Consciousness within Collaborative Working Environments”,Antoniac, Peter; Pallot, Marc; and Pulli, Petri
4Ibid.
5“New Horizons: The Rise of Collaborative Tools”, Klingenstein, Ken
6“Wiki History”, Cunningham, Ward
7http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/What-is-the-difference-between-one-way-and-two-way-sync, Accessed 12/01/2009
8Version Control with Subversion, O’Reilly Media. http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.5/index.html Accessed 12/02/09
9“Directory Service”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directory_server Accessed 12/02/09
10Hands-On Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Palmer, Michael
11Testing of 37 collaborative software suites. See list of software tested in Appendix A
12http://www.e2conf.com/, Accessed December 2, 2009
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