Email
You are probably using the simplest form of collaborative computing: email.
It lets two or more people communicate quickly and economically, but most
important, it lets them work when they choose to work. Email delivers messages
across the building or around the world in seconds, so two people working at the
same time can see each other's labors almost immediately. Others working farther
apart can write or respond during their respective working hours. So email can
be either realtime or your-time.
Collaborations via email can be as simple as passing ideas back and forth
until the participants reach consensus, or passing files as attachments between
team members. Advanced environments add the capability of sound- and
video-enabled email to incorporate voice inflections and body language to head
off misunderstanding.
If you're not already using email, what do you need to set it up?
Surprisingly little. NT and Windows 95 both include the Microsoft Exchange
client, which is a perfectly acceptable email program. Exchange supports all
types of attachments, including sound and video, so you can use it for
multimedia-enabled email. In fact, because Windows supports file associations,
you can receive an email with a video object and merely double-click the object
from within your email program to launch the video player and see the message.
One nice thing about the Exchange client is that it supports the Internet's Post
Office Protocol 3 (POP3), the most popular method of attaching email servers to
clients.
In addition to the email client at the workstation, you need one or more
email servers, especially if you communicate across networks or the Internet.
Microsoft's Exchange Server is one possibility, but other third-party server
programs work with the Exchange client.
Groupware
The next step up from email in the collaborative continuum is groupware.
IBM's Lotus Notes program is probably the best known example, but Netscape
Communications (Communicator), Microsoft (Exchange and other products), Novell
(GroupWise), and others all have offerings in this arena. Like email, groupware
is still for your-time collaborations, which let people work on a common project
but at their own pace.
Groupware encompasses email and adds many features. A typical groupware
package includes document and revision management, group calendars and
scheduling features, and the ability to plug in other capabilities specific to
your needs. Hundreds of programs--from enhanced email to sophisticated
production management systems--are available for Lotus Notes alone. You can use
standard programming and scripting languages to create these capabilities, or
you can buy them from third-party vendors.
These programs are typically tightly integrated with the operating system
they run on. This integration means, for example, that a Notes environment
running on NT works with the Registry for user and configuration management, and
users have one logon to access both Notes and the NT domain. The newest versions
of most popular groupware packages are also Internet-enabled, so users with a
Web browser (and the appropriate security authentication) can access the
groupware environment from anywhere.
The real power of groupware is its document management capabilities.
Traditional collaborative projects are usually paper based. They start as ideas,
progress into proposals, mutate into specifications, and then break down into
many individual documents that detail components, compare prices, track
development, and discuss problems. In a traditional environment, one person has
custody of each document. That person has responsibility for seeing that the
document remains up-to-date and is properly distributed to those who need to see
it. Users give their changes to the custodians, and the custodians alone have
permission to make those changes. How inefficient!
With groupware, the system is the custodian, and anyone who needs to see or
change a document can do so. The software tracks changes separately, and users
can quickly and easily see the revision history and the document in its current
state. The groupware system can resolve conflicts, such as two people making
changes at the same time, or ask for help in conflict resolution.
The group calendar and scheduling features in groupware packages are also
useful, but in a fully collaborative environment, users don't use these features
very often. Why schedule a meeting when all the participants can obtain the same
information, express their opinions, and arrive at consensus without leaving
their desks?
From these your-time applications, you can take the big step up, to
realtime. Progressing to realtime collaboration is a big step for several
reasons, not the least of which is cost. Collaborative your-time technologies
aren't hardware intensive, and most 386 and slower 486 vintage processors can
run email and groupware programs acceptably. When you step up to realtime
collaborations, you need the latest generation of both hardware and software, so
the expense can be a little scary.
Whiteboards
One realtime technology, whiteboarding, won't cost you an arm and a leg.
Whiteboarding lets two or more people at different locations view and operate
the same computer program simultaneously. One person's computer acts as a host
and executes the application while the whiteboarding program duplicates that
screen across all the participants' screens and collects keyboard and mouse
input from any of them. The whiteboarding program also lets users highlight and
draw arrows and other symbols on the screen without changing the application
data. This feature is very useful for discussions.
Whiteboarding can be a tremendous benefit in several areas: brainstorming,
presentation preparation, product or systems design, and troubleshooting.
Intel's ProShare LANDesk Personal Conferencing Manager is probably the
best-known example of a whiteboarding application, but many other good programs
are available.
In addition to the software, all you need for whiteboarding is a network
connection between the participants. The connection speed can be Ethernet fast,
dial-up slow, or a combination of the two. Because only screen displays and
keystrokes (and the keystrokes are compressed) are shipped around the network,
network utilization is very low. Usually, participants communicate via a
telephone conference call while they're whiteboarding, so people can discuss
what they are seeing, but whiteboarding is also an excellent complement to
videoconferencing.
Videoconferencing
Videoconferencing is the top of the line in collaborative technologies.
Depending on the level of your computer network and the quality of video and
audio you're willing to accept, you might be able to use videoconferencing for a
low price. If you have an old, slow network and old computers, you'll probably
have to invest a substantial amount of money on upgrades before you begin to use
realtime video.
That caveat is not to say that you won't be able to use video at all. It
takes a fairly recent computer to create video, but any Intel-based computer
with a late 386 or better chip can play back video adequately. Video capability
opens the door to using sound- and video-enabled email to communicate with
coworkers, other employees, and customers using the same videoconferencing
equipment you use for realtime communications with your more advanced peers.
Singing the praises of videoconferencing is not hard. Having the ability to
see, hear, and talk to the people you're working with, regardless of distance,
boosts productivity and saves money, even within one building. Let's say you
have an urgent matter that includes going over some product specifications with
a coworker. Unfortunately, the coworker is in the New York office, and you're in
Los Angeles. Without videoconferencing, you have two options: Ship the
specifications overnight to New York and then discuss them over the phone (with
the possibility that you might miss something), or fly, expensively and
uncomfortably, to the other side of the country. This situation occurs all the
time in large corporations. You lose two days of productivity to travel time and
incur the expense of airfare and hotel, not to mention all that yummy airport
food.
If you have videoconferencing, you can just comb your hair and open a
videoconferencing session with that person on the spot. You could both look at
the specifications on your respective screens simultaneously while each of you
appears in a small box in the other's screen. With the source documents and the
problem solvers in the same virtual place at the same time, you can iron out
problems and be done. No lost productivity, no extra expense, and no airport hot
dogs.
Using Collaborative Technology
So how does all this stuff work? As I mentioned earlier, you can use
collaborative computing in your-time and in realtime. In a your-time
environment, you arrive at the office around 8:00 a.m. and log on to email. A
note from Budapest says that while you slept, the East European work team added
three new spreadsheets to the fiscal projections project and made some changes
to the sales forecast. You reply with a "Good work!" message, and then
start your groupware application (Microsoft Team Manager, in this case). Team
Manager shows you which documents your coworkers revised and lets you see both
the revisions and the original numbers. You notice that one change has a
significant positive effect on costs and decide to acknowledge this discovery.
You start the video recorder application and record a brief congratulatory
message to the cost containment team. You jump into email again and send the
video message as an attachment to senior management, the financial people, and
the Europeans. Now it's time for some coffee.
Not so fast. Let's assume that your systems have realtime capability, too.
Just as you start to get out of your chair, a tone announces an incoming
videocall. You sigh and activate the videoconferencing application. The smiling
face of your manufacturing manager appears in a small window on screen, and she
tells you that the re-engineering taskforce just figured out a way to save
oodles of money by implementing a small change in the manufacturing process for
your most popular product. You're a little confused by what she's telling you,
so she calls up the engineering diagrams in her CAD program, then links you to
the whiteboarding application so that she can point out what she's talking
about. You see the changes, and they're good ones. You approve the changes, and
she logs them into the groupware system. With a click of the mouse, you close
the video window, and now you can go get that coffee.
Science fiction? Not at all. These technologies are available off the shelf
for very little money. All you need is a desire to improve your business and the
commitment to see the process through. Collaborative computing has many
benefits, ranging from immediate communication to reduced costs to improved
processes, and very few drawbacks.