A Web Services based Communication Services Framework for Collaborative Work

This paper considers the problem of integrating communication services that support group collaboration systems. Past experience has shown that heterogeneous communication services are extremely difficult to be integrated into collaboration environment and extended to meet continuous changing requirements. This paper aims at proposing a common, interoperable framework based on Web Services technology for integrating communication services in a collaboration environment. This framework allows the implementation of reusable communication services components that can be plugged into the collaboration system and be invoked on demand according to communication requirements of collaboration applications. Based on this framework, a prototype system called Rich Media Collaborative Workplace is developed. This system provides an integrated collaborative workplace with benefits of increasing productivity, saving cost and improving efficiency.