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Intranet hardware and underlying communications
protocols by themselves are of no great use to
anyone. The most powerful servers, fiber-optic
cables, T-1 communication lines, ISDN modems, or
streaming multimedia can't do anything by
themselves. They're only important because they
allow people to communicate, share information,
and work better together.
While many intranet
technologies allow people to work better
together-including just about every intranet
technology, including even the World Wide
Web-the most important set of intranet software
for allowing people to better communicate and
cooperate is called workgroup software.
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.
You'll never find an exact
definition of what workgroup software is. In
general, it's something of a fuzzy term. It
encompasses many different kinds of
technologies, everything ranging from advanced
videoconferencing to simple chat technology. To
some people, Internet newsgroups are a form of
groupware, while to other people, only more
sophisticated technologies qualify under that
definition.
However, in general, workgroup
software is software that goes beyond simple
messaging like newsgroups and allows people to
work together as a group in more complicated
ways. The key is that it allows people to go
beyond simply communicating, and lets them work
together on documents.
One thing to keep in mind
about groupware is that groupware did not come
into being with the intranet. There is nothing
in the TCP/IP architecture underlying intranets
that made groupware possible. In fact, groupware
has been around for years. In corporations where
there is a significant amount of sophisticated
design, and a complicated manufacturing
process-such as in companies that build
airplanes, for example-workgroup software has
long been used 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 different parts of an
overall design at the same time-and they are
able to see the results of other people's work,
since what other people do 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.
The first major workgroup
software for personal computers was Lotus Notes,
which combines electronic mail, discussion
software, workflow software and database
technology. While Notes was designed for
personal computers instead of workstations, it
wasn't designed for intranets, and worked
instead on Netware networks. However, in more
recent times, intranet-based features have been
added.
Intranet-based groupware does
both what Notes and CAD/CAM can do, and more.
While it's true that the TCP/IP protocols that
underlay intranets by themselves didn't make
groupware possible, it's also true that their
widespread acceptance has helped spread the use
of groupware. Once companies began to see how
Internet technologies such as newsgroups allowed
people to communicate better on the Internet,
they began to look at their corporations and see
how similar technologies could help companies
work together as a whole.
One of the most basic pieces
of workgroup software is messaging
software-programs that allow people to publicly
participate in group discussions. Group
discussion software has its roots in newsgroups,
and in discussion software that is found on
online services such as CompuServe. One key to
messaging software is that it be threaded.
Threaded messaging means that people can 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 marketing finances, and
so on. Good discussion software will allow
people to easily follow each of those different
threads.
Some messaging software goes
beyond that, however. There's nothing about
TCP/IP and intranet technology that in
particular that enables people to use threaded
messaging. However, what makes intranet
messaging software especially useful is the way
that it integrates with other Internet and
intranet technologies. For example, some
discussion software will allow the use of
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) embedded inside
messages. This means that from within a
discussion, someone could embed a link to a Web
page or other intranet resource. When powerful
programming tools like Java or ActiveX are added
to this mix, even more interactive and
multimedia possibilities are added, and the true
power of mixing discussions with intranet
technology can be seen.
An often overlooked workgroup
technology is electronic mail. As with
discussion software, it too can make use of
other intranet technologies. Some intranet
e-mail software can read HTML files, so links to
Web pages and other intranet documents can be
included in e-mail. And e-mail can be integrated
with discussion software, so that in a
discussion, people have the option of responding
to notes either in public discussions or by
private e-mail, depending on which link they
click on.
Yet another means of
communicating over intranets which has its roots
in older Internet technology is desktop chat. On
the Internet, this kind of chat is called
Internet Relay Chat, or IRC. It allows someone
from one computer to type messages on a
keyboard, and have that message instantly appear
on someone else's computer. Intranets can let
people do the same thing. While this kind of
communication isn't useful for complicated
discussions, it can be very good for quick
conversations.
A more sophisticated workgroup
application is desktop videoconferencing. It
requires that everyone involved have
computer-linked video cameras (which have become
quite inexpensive) and hardware and software
that allows computers to send and receive voice
and sound. While sitting at computers, people
can see each other and speak to each other. Some
videoconferencing software is server based,
which means that it requires that people
involved must log into a server in order to
participate in a videoconference with others.
Still other videoconferencing software lets
people connect directly with other people on an
intranet without having to go through a server -
all they'll need to know is someone's IP
address.
A related technology is called
whiteboard software. Whiteboard software
lets people see what is on someone else's
computer on an intranet, while sitting at their
own computer. Even more important than just
letting people see what is on the computer is
that whiteboard software allows people to use
their mouse to highlight parts of the screen,
write on the screen, and otherwise mark it up.
That means that people on the same intranet-even
if they're on opposite sides of the country from
each other-can comment on each other's work
easily.
Document management and
workflow software is useful for intranets for
comp`anies that have complicated work
procedures, or where many 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't
overwrite each others' work. It can also give
different people different kinds of rights to a
particular document, so that some people may
only be able to read documents, while others are
able to actually work on them, edit them, and
otherwise change them. And the most powerful
document management software allows many
different people to work on different parts of
the same document simultaneously.
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, intranet workflow management software
would allow procedures for filing expense
reports to be easily computerized, so that the
report could be sent automatically up the chain
of people who had to approve it and act on it
without having to resort to paper or mail.
It's important to note that no
one intranet is likely to have all these kinds
of workgroup applications. And no single piece
of 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 on an intranet may have different
kinds of workgroup applications. The point is
that intranet administrators can choose
whichever workgroup application best suits the
company.
One of the most important
reasons that companies put in an intranet is to
better enable people to work together. The most
powerful kind of software to let people work
together falls under the broad heading of
groupware. Groupware lets people
videoconference, share documents, participate in
discussions and work together in other ways.
Pictured here are some examples of how groupware
works together in an intranet.
- Discussion software allows
people from within a corporation to exchange
work and ideas. Included in the software are
links to 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, software can replicate intranet
discussions onto Internet news groups so that
from one discussion area, people from an
intranet can hold discussions with people from
within their company or people out on the
Internet.
- A popular workgroup use of
intranets will be whiteboard
applications. In a whiteboard application, two
or more people can see what is on each others'
computer screens across the intranet, and they
can talk about what they see. Additionally,
they can mark up what they see on each others
screens.
- With intranet groupware,
videoconferencing can finally be a corporate
reality. Desktop conferencing software allows
two or more people to see each other and talk
to each other on their computer screens, as
long as they have cameras connected to their
computers and sound-equipped computers. Since
intranets can be built using very
high-bandwidth connections, it's possible to
have a videoconference across an intranet,
while it can be much more difficult to do it
across an Internet because of the lower
bandwidth of the Internet.
- Document and workflow
management software allows intranet
administrators to create systems that track
and control access to documents through every
aspect of their creation, for example,
allowing only one person at a time to check a
document out of a library. They can provide a
"version history" of every document so that
anyone can see who has worked on it, and what
changes that person made. And they can give
certain people the right to "lock" the
document so that no further changes are
allowed to be made.
- Groupware can also allow
for desk-to-desk chats - that is, people can
sit at their computers and directly
communicate with others sitting at their
computers by typing on their keyboard. What
one person types at the keyboard shows up on
another person's computer screen, and vice
versa.
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