Box 5.6 Groupware as Collaboration Tool
Group calendars allow scheduling, project management, and
coordination among many people, and may provide support for
scheduling equipment as well. Typical features detect when schedules
conflict or find meeting times that will work for everyone. Group
calendars also help to locate people. Typical concerns are privacy (users
may feel that certain activities are not public matters), completeness
and accuracy (users may feel that the time it takes to enter schedule
information is not justified by the benefits of the calendar).
Collaborative writing systems may provide both real time support and
non-real time support. Word processors may provide asynchronous
support by showing authorship and by allowing users to track changes
and make annotations to documents. Authors collaborating on a
document may also be given tools to help plan and coordinate the
authoring process, such as methods for locking parts of the document
or linking separately-authored documents. Synchronous support allows
authors to see each other’s changes as they make them, and usually
needs to provide an additional communication channel to the authors
as they work (via videophones or chat).
Synchronous or Real time Groupware
Shared whiteboards allow two or more people to view and draw on a
shared drawing surface even from different locations. This can be used,
for instance, during a phone call, where each person can jot down notes
(e.g., a name, phone number, or map) or to work collaboratively on a
visual problem. Most shared whiteboards are designed for informal
conversation, but they may also serve structured communications
or more sophisticated drawing tasks, such as collaborative graphic
design, publishing, or engineering applications. Shared whiteboards
can indicate where each person is drawing or pointing by showing
telepointers, which are color-coded or labeled to identify each person.