BSCW: cooperation support for distributed workgroups

Abstract

The idea to use the World-Wide Web as a platform for the design and implementation of telecooperation applications is not new but there are only a few prototypes in use outside the research environment. In recent years the World Wide Web (WWW) has achieved a widespread use in commerce and industry as well as for educational purposes. Though, originally, the WWW was intended primarily for the distribution of information, it can be used successfully for enabling, and supporting cooperative work This paper describes a cooperation environment that uses the World Wide Web as a platform for communication and offers a number of functions for supporting collaboration in an workgroup environment. The basic idea is to provide the cooperation partners with a shared workspace on the Internet. Users perform their cooperation activities via this workspace by means of the standard WWW browsers. Furthermore, the system offers additional functions such as information about events and processes occurring in a workspace. The system provides cross-platform collaboration services to groups using existing Web technologies.