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<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Chapter 23 -- A Global View of Groupware</TITLE><META></HEAD><BODY TEXT="#000000" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" LINK="#0000EE" VLINK="#551A8B" ALINK="#CE2910"><H1><FONT SIZE=6 COLOR=#FF0000>Chapter 23</FONT></H1><H1><FONT SIZE=6 COLOR=#FF0000>A Global View of Groupware</FONT></H1><HR><P><CENTER><B><FONT SIZE=5><A NAME="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</A></FONT></B></CENTER><UL><LI><A HREF="#AGlobalViewofGroupware">A Global View of Groupware</A></UL><HR><P>Intranet hardware and underlying communications protocols by themselvesare of no great use to anyone. The most powerful servers, fiber-opticcables, T-1 communication lines, ISDN modems, or streaming multimediacan't do anything by themselves. They're only important becausethey allow people to communicate, share information, and workbetter together.<P>While many intranet technologies allow people to work better together-includingjust about every intranet technology, including even the WorldWide Web-the most important set of intranet software for allowingpeople to better communicate and cooperate is called workgroupsoftware. Workgroup software lets people share files and information;work better together in teams; cooperate more easily on projects;and in general work together in ways never before possible.<P>You'll never find an exact definition of what workgroup softwareis. In general, it's something of a fuzzy term. It encompassesmany different kinds of technologies, everything ranging fromadvanced videoconferencing to simple chat technology. To somepeople, Internet newsgroups are a form of groupware, while toother people, only more sophisticated technologies qualify underthat definition.<P>However, in general, workgroup software is software that goesbeyond simple messaging like newsgroups and allows people to worktogether as a group in more complicated ways. The key is thatit allows people to go beyond simply communicating, and lets themwork together on documents.<P>One thing to keep in mind about groupware is that groupware didnot come into being with the intranet. There is nothing in theTCP/IP architecture underlying intranets that made groupware possible.In fact, groupware has been around for years. In corporationswhere there is a significant amount of sophisticated design, anda complicated manufacturing process-such as in companies thatbuild airplanes, for example-workgroup software has long beenused in concert with Computer Aided Design/Computer Aided Manufacturing(CAD/CAM) software. With groupware and CAD/CAM software, for example,different designers and engineers are able to work on differentparts of an overall design at the same time-and they are ableto see the results of other people's work, since what other peopledo will be reflected in what they see in their part of the design.CAD/CAM systems like this tended to be used not on personal computers,but instead on workstations. <P>The first major workgroup software for personal computers wasLotus Notes, which combines electronic mail, discussion software,workflow software and database technology. While Notes was designedfor personal computers instead of workstations, it wasn't designedfor intranets, and worked instead on Netware networks. However,in more recent times, intranet-based features have been added.<P>Intranet-based groupware does both what Notes and CAD/CAM cando, and more. While it's true that the TCP/IP protocols that underlayintranets by themselves didn't make groupware possible, it's alsotrue that their widespread acceptance has helped spread the useof groupware. Once companies began to see how Internet technologiessuch as newsgroups allowed people to communicate better on theInternet, they began to look at their corporations and see howsimilar technologies could help companies work together as a whole.<P>One of the most basic pieces of workgroup software is messagingsoftware-programs that allow people to publicly participate ingroup discussions. Group discussion software has its roots innewsgroups, and in discussion software that is found on onlineservices such as CompuServe. One key to messaging software isthat it be <I>threaded</I>. Threaded messaging means that peoplecan read and respond to individual subject areas of a discussion.For example, in a message area devoted to corporate finances,there may be one thread concerning research-and-development finances,another concerning engineering finances, another about marketingfinances, and so on. Good discussion software will allow peopleto easily follow each of those different threads.<P>Some messaging software goes beyond that, however. There's nothingabout TCP/IP and intranet technology that in particular that enablespeople to use threaded messaging. However, what makes intranetmessaging software especially useful is the way that it integrateswith other Internet and intranet technologies. For example, somediscussion software will allow the use of Hypertext Markup Language(HTML) embedded inside messages. This means that from within adiscussion, someone could embed a link to a Web page or otherintranet resource. When powerful programming tools like Java orActiveX are added to this mix, even more interactive and multimediapossibilities are added, and the true power of mixing discussionswith intranet technology can be seen.<P>An often overlooked workgroup technology is electronic mail. Aswith discussion software, it too can make use of other intranettechnologies. Some intranet e-mail software can read HTML files,so links to Web pages and other intranet documents can be includedin e-mail. And e-mail can be integrated with discussion software,so that in a discussion, people have the option of respondingto notes either in public discussions or by private e-mail, dependingon which link they click on.<P>Yet another means of communicating over intranets which has itsroots in older Internet technology is desktop chat. On the Internet,this kind of chat is called Internet Relay Chat, or IRC. It allowssomeone from one computer to type messages on a keyboard, andhave that message instantly appear on someone else's computer.Intranets can let people do the same thing. While this kind ofcommunication isn't useful for complicated discussions, it canbe very good for quick conversations.<P>A more sophisticated workgroup application is desktop videoconferencing.It requires that everyone involved have computer-linked videocameras (which have become quite inexpensive) and hardware andsoftware that allows computers to send and receive voice and sound.While sitting at computers, people can see each other and speakto each other. Some videoconferencing software is server based,which means that it requires that people involved must log intoa server in order to participate in a videoconference with others.Still other videoconferencing software lets people connect directlywith other people on an intranet without having to go througha server - all they'll need to know is someone's IP address.<P>A related technology is called <I>whiteboard</I> software. Whiteboardsoftware lets people see what is on someone else's computer onan intranet, while sitting at their own computer. Even more importantthan just letting people see what is on the computer is that whiteboardsoftware allows people to use their mouse to highlight parts ofthe screen, write on the screen, and otherwise mark it up. Thatmeans that people on the same intranet-even if they're on oppositesides of the country from each other-can comment on each other'swork easily.<P>Document management and workflow software is useful for intranetsfor comp`anies that have complicated work procedures, or wheremany people must cooperatively put together a single document.In intranet document management software, a document can be "locked"so that only one person at a time can use it, and so people can'toverwrite each others' work. It can also give different peopledifferent kinds of rights to a particular document, so that somepeople may only be able to read documents, while others are ableto actually work on them, edit them, and otherwise change them.And the most powerful document management software allows manydifferent people to work on different parts of the same documentsimultaneously.<P>Similar to document management is workflow management software.This kind of groupware manages not just individual documents,but the entire workflow of an organization. For example, intranetworkflow management software would allow procedures for filingexpense reports to be easily computerized, so that the reportcould be sent automatically up the chain of people who had toapprove it and act on it without having to resort to paper ormail.<P>It's important to note that no one intranet is likely to haveall these kinds of workgroup applications. And no single pieceof software will allow for all these kinds of cooperative computing.Rather, most intranets will take a mix-and-match kind of approach.In fact, in some companies, different subnets or departments onan intranet may have different kinds of workgroup applications.The point is that intranet administrators can choose whicheverworkgroup application best suits the company.<H2><A NAME="AGlobalViewofGroupware"><FONT SIZE=5 COLOR=#FF0000>A Global View of Groupware</FONT></A></H2><P>One of the most important reasons that companies put in an intranetis to better enable people to work together. The most powerfulkind of software to let people work together falls under the broadheading of <I>groupware</I>. Groupware lets people videoconference,share documents, participate in discussions and work togetherin other ways. Pictured here are some examples of how groupwareworks together in an intranet.<UL><LI>Discussion software allows people from within a corporationto exchange work and ideas. Included in the software are linksto other intranet resources, so that from within a discussion,people can link out to a Web page on the Internet or intranet,or can even link into intranet databases. Additionally, softwarecan replicate intranet discussions onto Internet news groups sothat from one discussion area, people from an intranet can holddiscussions with people from within their company or people outon the Internet.<LI>A popular workgroup use of intranets will be <I>whiteboard</I>applications. In a whiteboard application, two or more peoplecan see what is on each others' computer screens across the intranet,and they can talk about what they see. Additionally, they canmark up what they see on each others screens.<LI>With intranet groupware, videoconferencing can finally bea corporate reality. Desktop conferencing software allows twoor more people to see each other and talk to each other on theircomputer screens, as long as they have cameras connected to theircomputers and sound-equipped computers. Since intranets can bebuilt using very high-bandwidth connections, it's possible tohave a videoconference across an intranet, while it can be muchmore difficult to do it across an Internet because of the lowerbandwidth of the Internet.<LI>Document and workflow management software allows intranetadministrators to create systems that track and control accessto documents through every aspect of their creation, for example,allowing only one person at a time to check a document out ofa library. They can provide a "version history" of everydocument so that anyone can see who has worked on it, and whatchanges that person made. And they can give certain people theright to "lock" the document so that no further changesare allowed to be made.<LI>Groupware can also allow for desk-to-desk chats - that is,people can sit at their computers and directly communicate withothers sitting at their computers by typing on their keyboard.What one person types at the keyboard shows up on another person'scomputer screen, and vice versa.</UL><HR><CENTER><P><A HREF="ch22.htm"><IMG SRC="PC.GIF" BORDER=0 HEIGHT=88 WIDTH=140></A><A HREF="#CONTENTS"><IMG SRC="CC.GIF" BORDER=0 HEIGHT=88 WIDTH=140></A><A HREF="contents.htm"><IMG SRC="HB.GIF" BORDER=0 HEIGHT=88 WIDTH=140></A><A HREF="ch24.htm"><IMG SRC="NC.GIF" BORDER=0 HEIGHT=88 WIDTH=140></A><HR WIDTH="100%"></P></CENTER></BODY></HTML>?? 快捷鍵說明
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