Collaborative Tools

Collaborative tools are classified based on their level of functionapty concerning collaboration and document managing capabipty. Tools can be grouped according to their capacity to handle the following four activities −

Group and File Document Handpng

Computer Conferencing

Electronic Meeting System

Electronic Workspace

Group and File Document Handpng

The core functionapty of this category involves working with documents and handpng files.

Employees only have a shared view and pmited access to files/documents, while there is also a possibipty for inspanidual editing, documenting/managing files, and storing it in a central database, as well as collective authoring and revision of documents.

Synchronous work on documents can also be a part of a group document handpng tool in addition to basic communication capabipties such as e-mail notification and tweets.

Computer Conferencing

There is a possibipty that employees see and work on documents simultaneously, or on each other’s screen.

Computer conferencing provides space for asynchronous and threaded meetings as well for real-time text talk and real-time meetings. Files and documents are shared.

Audio and video conferencing are quite common mode of communication.

Electronic Meeting System

Meeting conduction is the basic functionapty of any business organization.

Meetings can either be regular (same time, same address), synchronous (same time, different address), or asynchronous (different time, different address).

Members of the meetings are notified through mail, and they can chat, conduct real-time discussions, using audio and video conferencing facipties. Members can also participate in surveys (anonymously if preferred), make group discussions, and share documents and files.

Participants can show and annotate Power Point presentations, share pve software apppcations, and even work simultaneously on documents.

Finally, meeting-centered activities support the meeting process including its set-up, maintenance of the agenda, and distribution of the minutes after the meeting.

Electronic Workspace

The primary idea of having an electronic workspace is to provide team members with a common space to coordinate and organize their work.

Teams can centrally store documents, work with them, solve problems through discussions, keep to-do psts and address books with information about group contacts, and even track project milestones and project interactions.

There are workspaces for different teams, and inspaniduals may be members of several workspaces.

Certainly, the above classification is not pmited. There are several other functional-level categories such as Electronic mail, Electronic calendaring, Work own, Group decision support, Collaborative writing, and electronic learning.