Page 111 - DCAP307_PLANNING_AND_MANAGING_IT_INFRASTRUCTURE

Unit 6: Collaboration Tools

Collaborative authoring tools: Notes
Wikis, such as Confluence, MediaWiki, and PBwiki
Collaborative document editing tools, such as Google Docs, Adobe Buzzword,
and signals Writeboard
Project coordination:
Customer relationship management systems, when used to support customer-
service provider interactions, or to help coordinate services provided by
multiple people or organisations

Issue tracking (e.g. ticketing systems, to-do lists)
Project management systems (e.g. Microsoft Project, when used in a
collaborative manner to assign and track tasks)

Time tracking (e.g. milestones, team member work breakdown)
Version control systems
Workflow systems
Social networking tools:
Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Elgg, Ning, and others; these environments
enable users to share personal and group profiles and activity streams, helping
them identify and attract collaboration partners.

Today’s Web 2.0 technologies are expanding the list of collaborative tools, taking advantage of
a growing base of content creators and online experimenters to transition social tools into
opportunities for academic collaboration and innovation.
Now, we will explain various collaboration tools based on the activities and opportunities they
enable:

Immediacy
Enhanced voice communications
Ambient communications

Image sharing
Document construction
Social interaction
Geographic richness

6.2.1 Immediacy

The potential of IM (instant messaging) as a collaboration tool should not be overlooked. IM,
sometimes referred to as chat or text chat, is a versatile, accessible, and almost universally
available tool that supports collaboration in multiple ways. IM is generally viewed as a platform
to support synchronous text communication between two or more people using computers, and
it excels at that. But it is much more. Many chat/IM client applications support audio chat, video
chat, file transfer, and even desktop sharing in addition to simple text chat. Perhaps the greatest
feature of IM is the number of people who use it and know how to use it. IM is almost as
ubiquitous as e-mail. Indeed, web-based IM is included in all Gmail accounts. Other applications,
including Facebook, are building IM into their interfaces. Whether or not you like IM, you will
know how to use it.

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