Groupware technologies provide tremendous opportunities for enhancing an organization. Although often ambiguous, these technologies can be boiled down to a few fundamental techniques for success.
I’ve really been getting into jungle lately. Not jungle as in rain forests and strange critters, but jungle, the sample-and-turntable-based music characterized by crazy beats and long, long parties. Jungle is a melting pot of styles and techniques, ripping samples from TV, jazz, reggae, anything, and merging it with a lifeline, imbuing those on the dance floor with a common purpose, a shared group pulse. The comparison between this musical mayhem and the dizzying rush of my every working day seems strangely apt. On the dance floor, every moment is new barrage of sound, light, and motion, challenging me to take it in and make it mine. On the road, the challenge is no less, balancing research and work, theory and practice, email and voice mail, periodicals, Web postings, always trying to keep up with the information pulsing through my world.
Information is the lifeblood of any organization. Ever more critical is the ability to move information, to feed the corporate organs—people—which permit perception, motion, and success. Beginning slowly at first and reaching its crescendo in the feverish pace of the ‘90s, the need to move information between individuals and marshal the vast knowledge base that constitutes a company has placed new demands on the creativity of computer designers. A veritable dictionary of new buzzwords has arisen to describe these new functions, often as blurred and inseparable as the jungle beats echoing in the back of my mind.
Welcome to Groupware
Groupware is not a technology; it’s not a specific product, but rather a set of techniques for helping people become more productive in their daily tasks. While groupware tools such as Lotus Notes provide unique benefits for developing and deploying such environments, there is no golden rule that says they must be the chosen tools to do so. But just as relational databases address specific needs in manipulating business data,
groupware products provide specialized functions that work effectively with “people information.”
We can broadly categorize groupware architectures (see Figure 1) as falling into one of several categories based on where their components run and how they communicate:
• Host-based. This includes products such as OfficeVision, in which all data is stored and all processing is performed on one machine; most UNIX mail systems are another example of this kind of system.
• Shared-file. Client function is increasingly distributed to desktop computers, which perform user interface and presentation functions and may be used as personal message stores. You use a file server to host a common post office, which client machines access through regular LAN file sharing. MS Mail and cc:Mail are the best examples of this kind of system.
• Client/Server. Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes are the front-runners in the client/server groupware race. These products use their own proprietary remote procedure call protocols to communicate between client and server machines. Such implementations tend to provide the greatest capability of the system. It is important to note, however, that these systems have been extended substantially in the last few years to support open protocol messaging.
• Open Standard/Open Protocol. Systems based on standard IP-based protocols such as the Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP) for mail delivery, Post Office Protocol (POP3) and Internet Mail Access Protocol (IMAP) for message store access, and the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) for address directory access. The capabilities of these systems depend on the specific client- and server-side components that are used to deploy them. Netscape solutions are based on this approach.
Group Moves: The Techniques of Peopleware
Watching good junglists dance is impressive. Their dichotomy of jerking steps and graceful, fluid motions lends itself uniquely to the union of sounds that envelops them. The technique is immaculate, cobbled together from countless influences; it is the unity of these influences that makes the trance so potent. Groupware solutions too are built of techniques. In order to understand the capacity of groupware solutions to enhance daily operations, we first need to examine what it is they actually do. I’ve arbitrarily selected five core techniques to focus on (messaging, scheduling, discussion, knowledge bases, and conferencing), although certainly others are worth mentioning.
Sometime back in the ‘80s, still in school with far too much time on my hands, I ran a small bulletin board system (BBS) on a PC I had managed to scrape together. The BBS had just one modem (so only one user could be online at a time) and hummed incessantly in my ear as I tried to sleep at night. But, despite its retrospectively primitive nature, it was a complete messaging environment. All 37 of my regular users could send messages to one another, just as they did with countless other BBSs they frequented. System operators more ambitious than I had the option of participating in something called FidoNet, a worldwide network of independent messaging servers connected through modems and free gateway software. Under FidoNet, mail was pooled on a hub in each local calling zone and then forwarded to other zones as required, often taking several hops and perhaps days to reach its recipient. FidoNet was revolutionary: It allowed people a great distance apart to communicate on a public network at virtually no cost (sound familiar?).
Well, before FidoNet was implemented, corporations the world over were deploying host-based solutions on mainframe and midrange machines, which allowed their entire user base to perform a similar kind of communication within the organization. Many military, government, and academic communities had deployed systems allowing people in disparate geographies to contact each other electronically by using their computer network. All of these systems are part of the early evolution of groupware.
This is why any discussion of groupware techniques must begin with messaging; it forms the basis for every other type of group communication that we will examine. Messaging is widely used and loosely defined. The core requirement is the delivery of discernable units of information, usually text messages, from one party to another. A plethora of technologies have been used to satisfy this requirement, each one characteristically representing the state of the industry at the time. Common functions of messaging systems include the ability to attach supporting files to messages, whether these be documents, images, or programs, and the ability to track the status of a message, to know at any point whether it has been delivered, read, deleted, and so on.
Most modern group messaging products began their lives as intraorganizational communication tools. Without an easy way to link heterogeneous systems, the boundaries of one company often dictated the borders of the messaging domain as well. Today, it is almost inconceivable that a corporate messaging network would not be tied into the global Internet. The majority of groupware solutions I have deployed began with the need for global connectivity. By far, the most common standard for delivering messages between organizations is SMTP, which is the dominant TCP/IP protocol for mail routing. Other standards (i.e., X.400) and proprietary protocols (i.e., SNA Distribution Services) are also used to interconnect messaging systems.
Next to messaging, the most sought-after function of groupware systems is scheduling, the ability to organize the time of human and material resources. Conceptually, a scheduling system is just a special-function messaging system with the purpose of notifying individuals of upcoming commitments and allowing the group to coordinate effectively the timing thereof. In practice, almost every scheduling system is built on top of an existing messaging infrastructure. Whether we are examining Notes, Exchange, or Netscape Calendar Server, we’ll notice the same trend: a calendar function that uses (and enhances) a messaging function.
Scheduling and calendaring systems typically contain several functions:
• Maintaining a chronological listing of appointments that are associated with an individual or a shared calendar (or both)
• Allowing team members either to explicitly examine their co-workers’ schedules, or at least to scan for free time into which new commitments may be booked, avoiding conflicts and the hassle of verbally scheduling mutually agreeable times
• Allowing users to reserve material resources, such as rooms or projectors, as part of a booking process
• Sending out invitations, confirmations, and other messages relevant to the scheduling of an activity by using whichever messaging infrastructure the scheduling system is based on; most implementations will provide an automated mechanism for invitees to accept, decline, or otherwise provide feedback to the proposed schedule as part of the process
As simple messaging systems grow in scope and popularity, so do the number of recipients associated with each message. The ease with which a user can deliver a single message to any large number of recipients makes it extremely convenient for groups of people to execute a thread of conversation by sending messages back and forth within the group. However, several drawbacks exist to this approach. First, each user may need to maintain a list of all those involved in any given conversation, making it easy to overlook or erroneously include a recipient in a message, especially if the sender is tracking multiple conversations. Second, recipients may find it tough to include or exclude themselves from a thread; they are totally at the whim of the senders. Third, it is impossible for those outside the conversation to read the information exchanged and potentially difficult to join a conversation after it has started.
To address these issues, another specialized variant of messaging was born: group discussion systems. As with scheduling, the technologies for deploying group forums are linked closely to the messaging systems on which they are based. Internet users rely on the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP), Lotus Notes users access discussion
databases, and MS Exchange users post messages to public folders. Additionally, many dedicated tools and applications exist to create discussion forums that allow browsing and contribution through a Web browser or other user interface (e.g., O’Reilly Software’s WebBoard).
Discussions typically allow individuals to post messages to the group/database/folder so that others with similar interests or aptitudes can read and possibly respond to the posting. All postings in the discussion are available to anyone who has access to the system itself. If I need to send a private message to a participant, I fall back to messaging. Use of discussion boards ranges widely within and without the organization. Internally, you can use them to post employee announcements, to allow open discussion and feedback on general company policy, or to enable team or project members to share challenges and solutions. Typically, you use external discussion boards for customer support and public forums for feedback on products or services. Additionally, thousands of discussion forums exist on the public Usenet with newsgroups on nearly every topic imaginable (and even some that aren’t).
Just as discussions are a variant of messaging, knowledge bases are variants of discussions. They too are like posting boards but are tightly controlled. Content is dictated rather than evolved. These repositories provide a central store for information that is likely to be required by many people within and/or without an organization. Internally, policy documents, product information, competitive notes, and quality standards are a few examples of the kinds of information published. Knowledge bases embrace the ability of discussion databases to permit access by many people, but discard the idea of threads of conversation. Mechanisms are often present outside of the repository itself for debate to occur.
Although often similar in structure to discussion databases or public folders, knowledge bases can take a wide range of formats. Most groupware products provide a mechanism for establishing such a service, but an equally effective knowledge base can be implemented by using a Web server or similar platform for publishing information. In many cases, the primary function of an intranet Web server is exactly this, to provide access to the company’s knowledge base. Knowledge bases commonly are linked to some kind of data store, whether relational databases (e.g., the knowledge base used by a technical support department) or document libraries (e.g., the human resources department’s repository of policy documents).
Conferencing and chat, while superficially similar to discussion applications, warrant special attention. These solutions also allow users to send messages for the entire group to read, but they do so in real time. (Most chat systems do not archive conversations for later reference.) Unlike discussion boards, real-time technologies are not usually based on an existing messaging product, but rather establish their own protocols for sending text and nontext message between users.
As with messaging systems, every real-time chat implementation manifests its own characteristics. One of the most popular uses of the Internet is Internet Relay Chat (IRC), which is the principal TCP/IP protocol for an online group party or a somber business discussion. IRC is a server-based protocol that has proven itself able to support large numbers of users in a single “room.” Other text chat products are in common use, such as ICQ by ICQ, Inc. (formerly Mirabilis Ltd.) ICQ establishes direct connections between participants rather than hosting the conversation on a common server and allows for easy transmission of programs, images, Web links, or other related items during a conversation.
Real-time conferencing is an extension of simple chat systems and brings even more capability to the conference group. Products such as Lotus’s Sametime, Microsoft’s NetMeeting, or Netscape’s Collabra permit participants not only to send text messages and related files, but also to share a common virtual whiteboard, and to include audio/video feeds as part of the online conference. Each of these products relies on a central server to facilitate the conference.
Let’s Get This Party Started!
Jungle is a collage, an assemblage of pieces that becomes the pulse. So it is with groupware technologies, too. Each technique a valuable practice in its own right, groupware’s effectiveness stems from the way that usage of one tool suggests an opportunity to leverage another. These practices enable new applications and suggest new ways to execute old ones. As with any software, these applications are as diverse, and as elaborate, as their creators can envision and execute. Isolated from one another, each of the groupware techniques we’ve looked at represents a form of communication that can be leveraged to enhance a business when the opportunity arises.
• Instead of picking up the phone, Julia composes a new message containing the complete details of an inquiry she is making. She can be confident that the recipient will reply with useful information when he gets a chance.
• Rather than printing and faxing a document, Kent sends it as an email attachment. The recipient can then easily print, forward, copy, revise, or otherwise process the document as needed.
• A developer, faced with a difficult problem, might post a request for help in an internal discussion forum or appeal to the global community for advice on Usenet. The suggestions of those who respond lead to a solution.
• Rather than distributing pamphlets detailing the new medical benefits program, the human resources department posts the information to the human resources knowledge base and sends all employees a message informing them of its presence. The company saves the cost of printing and distributing the information, and employees are guaranteed access to the information.
• As part of a new product announcement, the manufacturer electronically distributes marketing and technical materials and then hosts an online conference to which business partners are invited. The manager and designers of the product field questions and concerns regarding the product in real time, and all attendees are able to learn from the discussion.
When examining groupware technologies, you will encounter many terms used to categorize the ways in which these technologies can be combined and applied. Collaboration and workflow are but two exciting vistas already open.
Collaboration, a basic mode of human interaction, predates groupware, computers, electricity, and recorded history itself. We collaborate daily within families, sports teams, and performance groups. So, where does modern computer software and communications enter the picture? The real impact of groupware solutions on collaboration is one of explosion, obliterating many of the boundaries that shape the structure of a team. A workgroup is no longer defined by the space its members share or the watercooler around which they congregate, but by the address book entries of the software they use. Collaborative teams make use of all the groupware techniques mentioned above. Members work in the environment that most encourages their productivity—at the head office, at the problem site, or in their basement with the fast connection—providing them with the greatest resources to contribute to the effort.
Workflow applies groupware technologies with the intent of optimizing the daily movement of information units between those people whose task it is to process them. Based largely on messaging techniques, workflow can help reduce the time it takes to cycle a process between people, and it reduces the chance that documents will be damaged, misfiled, misrouted, or otherwise lost. Many times, a workflow application is an adaptation of a process that already exists as a paper trail or kludged database system. By replacing three phone calls, two voice-mail messages, two faxes (the first one failed), paper rustling, and stapler searching with an interactive online process, organizations can save time and resources, plus keep better track of the whole thing to boot. It becomes the role of the workflow system to route information to the people whose responsibility it is to further the
process. If a hiccup occurs, the software can immediately notify the appropriate parties to take action.
Regardless of how they are implemented, groupware applications all have the same objective: to make an organization more dynamic, more responsive, and more successful.
The Pulse Quickens
The jungle artist lives in a world of sound and rhythm, always on the listen for the next intriguing sound, embracing diversity. Dealing with diverse kinds of information requires a variety of tools—relational databases, document libraries, public folder systems, audio and graphical systems, and yet unknown forms of intelligence sharing. The groupware solutions available today represent an invaluable toolset for deploying applications that are based on human interaction. Increasingly, these applications are an essential part of modern IT strategy.
Through the use of groupware, countless organizations, large and small, have achieved tremendous, quantifiable results in terms of efficiency, cost savings, and satisfaction. Every month sees the release of new products or enhancements to existing ones, presenting new opportunities to take advantage of groupware technologies. As average users become increasingly comfortable with using computers (and as computers themselves become easier to use), the portion of communication that begins and remains in the digital domain will only increase. Groupware is both a cause and result of this evolution. As soon as you get your finger on the groupware pulse, these tools can be your guide to the information jungle.
Client Server Host-based OfficeVision OfficeVision (5250 session) Shared-file Microsoft Outlook OS/400 NetServer file sharing1
(MS Mail) Client/Server Lotus Notes Lotus Domino Open Standard/ Netscape Messenger2 OS/400 SMTP/POP3 Open Protocol
1 This could also be run on an Integrated PC Server (using NetWare, OS/2 Warp, etc.) 2 Any SMTP/POP3 client may be used instead (Eudora, Lotus Notes SMTP client, MS Outlook Express, etc.)
Figure 1: Here are some examples of various groupware architectures on the AS/400.
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