The collaboration tool helps people to collaborate. The purpose of the collaboration tool is to support a group of two or more individuals to achieve common goals or targets. Collaboration tools can be non-technological properties such as paper, flipcharts, post-it notes or whiteboards. They can also include software and applications such as collaborative software.
Video Collaboration tool
Collaboration tools before Web 2.0
The first idea to use computers to work with each other was formed in 1945 when Vannevar Bush shared his thoughts on a system he named "memex" in his article "As We May Think". A system that stores individual books, recordings, and communications and makes them available at any time. At this stage he calls it "an enlarged supplement for his memory" .
Computerized office automation
In 1968 the computer system was brought in relation to communication and potential ways to work together when not in the same place. J. C. R. Licklider, head of the US High Level Defense Research Agency (DARPA). In his article "Computer as a Communication Tool" he envisioned the idea that there should be a way " facilitate communication among people without uniting them in one place" , that eventually led to ARPANET, the commercial time division system and finally the internet.
When manual typewriters were discovered in 1970, everyone learned about office automation, which led to the first collaborative software called the Electronic Information Exchange System (EIES) allowed to conduct surveys, threaded responses and group-structured approaches. In 1980 CA Ellis educators came up with the term "groupware" definition as "computer-based systems that support groups of people engaged in common tasks (or goals) and that provide interfaces to the shared environment" . After six years, Brian Wilson later coined the term "Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) in 1986. He described it as a general term that combines an understanding of how people work in groups with computer networking technology that allows , and associated hardware, software, services, and techniques ".
This laid the foundation for further developing on groupware ideas and in the 1990s Lotus Notes, Microsoft Exchange Server and Outlook were created. In 2002 at Social Software Summit Clay Shirky introduced the phrase "social software" as "software that supports group interaction".
Maps Collaboration tool
Primary type
According to "Kiel's Approach to Collaborative Systems" there are three points of collaboration: communication, coordination and collaboration. These categories are often used to compile the various collaboration tools available.
Communications
Communication collaboration tools make it possible to exchange information between individuals:
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The invention of email as a collaboration tool changed the way we communicate at work. This is the easiest method to make contact within an organization and is well established. Specifically for managing daily correspondence, emails can reach different people with just one click.
Although email is still the most commonly used tool in communication collaboration, but not so efficient on a large scale and other forms of communication seem to take over. In addition to its flexibility, it is not so good for group conversations as they grow too fast. There is no way to ensure that you have the latest version of the document that has been sent to you and it is not possible to always track through your email what needs to be done and with what deadlines. When Cisco states in their Cisco Blog about "The Future of Email", email "will increase productivity by organizing your data for you" and try to bring more transparency into your work with email.
Voicemail
Voicemail as a collaboration tool is increasingly integrated in services like Google Voice. As indicated in the future scenario of IBM the role of voicemail can be what email is for us today.
Instant messaging (IM)
Through instant messaging as a collaboration tool, we can reach people in the organization in real-time. In the future, instant messaging is no longer stand-alone software, but it integrates very well in larger solutions like Unified Communication.
VoIP (voice over ip)/video call
Voice over IP as a collaboration tool quickly gained popularity among companies and is part of their communications portfolio. As reports from Eclipse Telecom point out, VoIP is moving towards the country to completely replace our phones in our office and also integrate in existing collaboration service environments.
Coordinate
Coordination is defined as " deliberate and orderly alignment or adjusting partner actions to achieve mutually determined goals ". These supportive collaboration tools are the ones that allow you to organize group activities, schedules and deliverables.
Online Calendar
You will not find organizations that do not have an online calendar, they are part of our professional behavior at work and fully integrated in other systems. As a research paper from the University of Bath explains, online calendars can be in the future very closely related to other data such as social media and even have a greater effect.
Time tracker
Time trackers are mainly used to measure employee performance. Its effects on productivity are discussed as controversial.
Spreadsheets
Spreadsheets such as email are very popular in the corporate environment and as collaborative tools that are important for financial analysis or modeling. Although very popular, several studies have found that many spreadsheets contain inaccurate data and are therefore inefficient.
Collaboration
Collaboration tools allow groups to hold real-time discussions and to form ideas or shared thoughts. Trends in terms of collaboration targets to help maintain "key ideas" in large organizations and make connections visible. Also the idea of ​​bringing people who do not work in the company regularly into the organization and utilize their knowledge.
Videoconference
In many cases, video conferencing is part of the overall communication strategy and organizational collaboration. Especially now when all cloud-based services and therefore implementation costs become more affordable. The long-term vision for video conferencing lies in the correct use of computer processing power, data storage or mobile bandwidth speeds to further reduce the barriers to collaboration.
IM teleconferencing
Bringing a team, meeting or event as close as possible is the teleconferencing solution you want to do. Apart from the business environment Teleconferencing is currently used in many fields, such as telemedicine, where they contribute enormously to efficiency and productivity because distance and time are a limited factor.
Classification by dimension
Collaboration tools out of sync
Collaboration tools are out of sync when their users collaborate at different times:
E-Mail, mailinglists and newsgroups
E-Mail is the best known and most commonly used asynchronous collaboration tool - it offers intuitive features to forward messages, create email groups and attach documents. Furthermore, the information can be chronologically sorted and assigned to a calendar task or event.
Calendar group
Through group meeting calendars can be scheduled, projects are managed and people are coordinated. This is a great tool to help you ignore your submissions and deadlines. Group calendars include functions such as scheduling schedule detection with others on your team or organization, or coordinating meeting times suitable for everyone on your team. In addition to the positive effects of group calendars there is also controversy about privacy and control that may affect your productivity.
Workflow system
With workflow files or documents the system can be communicated to the organization by following a rigorous and organized process. They provide services for routing, form development and support for roles. Since the current back and forth system is controlled from a single point, individuals within an organization usually do not have permission to manage their own processes so far - this must be changed by implementing collaborative planning tools into the current workflow system.
Hypertext
Hypertext technology connects our files to each other and ensures that always the latest version is available to us. When people work on different documents, the system automatically updates the information from others.
Sync collaboration tool
Sync collaboration tools, when users collaborate at the same time:
The whiteboard gives its users the ability to work efficiently on tasks via a web-based platform. They can be used for informal discussions as well as for communications that require structures, involving images or are generally more sophisticated. It may also be very useful for realizing virtual classrooms.
Video communication system
The video communication system offers two-way or multi-directional calls with live videostream. This can be better than the phone system with additional visual elements.
Chat system
The chat system allows people to write and send messages in real-time. They are usually structured in chat rooms that show us usernames, number of people, locations, discussion topics, and more.
Decision support system
Decision support systems support groups to manage the decision-making process. They give you the ability to exchange brainstorming, analyze your ideas and even be used to choose. Decision-making is increasingly becoming a core function of modern work. According to the study, 50% of organizational decisions failed.
Multiplayer game
Computer games are a good example of how multi-user situations can look in the future. They are constantly being developed and expanded with features like chat and video systems.
Online Collaboration Tools
Online collaboration tools are web-based applications that offer basic services such as group instant messaging, file sharing mechanisms and collaborative search engines (CSEs) to find information distributed within an organization, community, or team system. In addition, this functionality is sometimes extended by providing examples of integrated online calendars, online whiteboard sharing to manage the tasks and ideas or integration of Internet teleconferences. A variety of excellent online collaboration tools are available (see List of collaborative software). Their focus ranges from simple to complex, inexpensive to expensive, locally installed to remote hosts and from commercial to open source.
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New gadgets and devices are created daily for the purpose of making daily work easier. The online collaboration tools are currently trying to resolve issues like this:
- '38% working time lost job duplication and 58% of people squander an hour a day looking for information '.
- '28 hours a week is spent writing e-mail, seeking information and collaborating internally '.
- '59% of managers lose important information because they can not find it or never see it '.
- 'Six weeks per year wasted by executives looking for missing documents'.
These aspects show that the problems we face are not technological issues - it's about people and their interactions. Although technology really helps us in this way, the key to solving this problem can be found in the way we use this tool. Although video conferencing tools like Skype or FaceTime connect us with everyone, they do not always give us all contextual information. What we're seeing may not be reality, because there may be other people in the room that people do not know when skyping with your co-workers at work. More connectivity also allows more interruptions: You work from home but are always exchanged by your neighbors or lawn mowers. This is why the future of collaboration tools looks for models that allow companies to collaborate in a focused and structured way. One such application is Finnish company Fingertip Ltd, which allows companies to facilitate collaboration and decision making.
Evolvement
From a simple communications solution to Unified Communications (UC)
The way we communicate with each other is constantly changing and disrupting our workplace environment. In 1971 programmer Ray Tomlinson sent the first message between two computers. Eight years later, Usenet, a multi-network online forum, changed the way we exchanged information. With IRC in 1986, group instant messaging and chat became accessible to non-technical users for the first time and after the AOL/AIM launch in 1992 we had faced the first global community. The discovery of Wikipedia in 2001 and various social networks (MySpace, Linkedin and Facebook) formed a community connected to the digital world, globally oriented and willing to use collaboration tools not only for social interaction, but to improve workplace efficiency..
From local to global - global workforce needs
In addition to improving our efficiency, online collaboration tools are facing the change that organizations operate globally and flexible workplace implementation becomes more important. A collaborative work environment is one of the drivers of corporate globalization as they offer new business opportunities through innovation and help and make it possible to gather knowledge from around the world. Especially large and large SME organizations are able to do business on a global scale by using them. Since 1950 the intensity of collaboration has been greatly improved, information flows are becoming faster and the skills needed to do the work have increased dramatically. Online collaboration tools allow companies to survive in a global-oriented industry.
IBM conducted research with CIOs about the organization to find out which trends influenced most businesses in 2010, with six key points:
- Internet participatory
- Change the demographics of labor
- The emergence of software as a service
- Data and device virtualization
- Increased design simplicity and use of technology
All of these points emphasize the importance of collaboration and specify certain requirements for the future of online collaboration tools to consistently enable broad business collaboration. Online collaboration tools such as social networking websites and web conferences show how fast the environment is changing - "in 2010, the average salaried worker will actively participate in at least five different ad hoc teams simultaneously".
When asked participants of "The New Global Study", a report conducted by the European Commission in 2009, about the benefits of online collaboration, the following three points are mentioned:
- Support team coordination (73% of respondents)
- Support knowledge and learning (69%)
- Allows dispersed team members to be a better part of the team
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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