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| Team Up On Documents |
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Beyond The Basics January 1999 • Vol.10 Issue 1 |
Team Up On Documents Collaboration Tools Get Coworkers Together, Regardless Of Location | ||
 Teamwork seems to be getting harder all the time. You'd love to run the final version of a major project by your team members before submitting it, but there are a couple of problems. Those team members are at different locations and in various time zones. The project contains a mixture of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files, and you need everything done by tomorrow afternoon. Welcome to the modern business world where everyone works in teams and where documents are a collaborative effort. In the days of typewriters, workers collaborated on documents by passing around paper drafts. They wrote comments and corrections in red pen. The process was slow and allowed timely collaboration only with nearby coworkers. Later, overnight delivery and then fax machines let distant team members participate. These days, business moves too fast to trade papers, and no one wants to waste time transcribing handwritten comments. The answer is often the Internet, which makes it easy for team members to share documents, whether they're separated by a cubicle partition or thousands of miles. The 'Net is critically important when the team members work for different companies, as the members are unlikely to share a common network. Software, too, has become more collaborative. All the major suites, such as Microsoft Office and Corel WordPerfect Suite, make it easy to add comments to documents and track changes or suggestions by other team members. Groupware such as Lotus Notes is specialized software designed to facilitate all phases of collaborative document creation. Unless you work for a large company, groupware is probably not an option. It is expensive, requires specialized hardware, takes a dedicated support staff, and even requires extensive training for users.
The first step in document collaboration is physically sharing files. Four main tools facilitate file sharing: diskettes, a common network, E-mail, and the Internet.  Diskettes Back when networks were uncommon and few people used the Internet, team members at the same location could just walk over and hand diskettes to each other. This became known as a Sneakernet. When team members were located farther away, overnight delivery services facilitated swapping diskettes. Zip drives and writable CDs have greatly increased the capacity of removable storage media, but electronic delivery has turned disks into a last resort for document sharing. Disk sharing has a major disadvantage for larger groups. Since each team member sharing a document needs a copy of the document, comments are not posted in a central location. As a result, someone must consolidate all changes into a common document. Network If team members share a common network, the administrator can create a shared folder and give each member access to it. All team members can access a single copy of each document, and the operating system will prevent conflicts in posting changes to the documents. As an added bonus, a common network subdirectory eliminates the need for any specialized software that facilitates file sharing. This is generally the best approach when it's available. E-mail E-mail lets team members who don't share a common network share files quickly and easily. Most of the compatibility problems of a few years ago have disappeared, so it's rarely a problem for team members with one E-mail program to share files with those using a different program. E-mail is fast and pervasive, but someone still must consolidate changes made to various copies of files circulated by E-mail. NetVoyage's NetEnvelope overcomes the problem. You create files using your regular application software, then use the NetEnvelope software to collect them into an electronic envelope. Next, you define who will receive the envelope and what rights they have to the contents, such as viewing or modifying. When you click Send, NetEnvelope uses your existing E-mail system to send copies of the envelope to everyone on the list. Everyone receives information on how to download the NetEnvelope software if they do not have it. The software monitors any activity on the envelope's contents and automatically updates all the envelopes via E-mail when changes are made.
NetEnvelope is free when you register at NetVoyage's Web site (http://www.netvoyage.com) and have the company host the server you use to collaborate and share documents. NetVoyage limits your space to 20 megabytes (MB) per user. Businesses that need more space or more security may purchase a server to administer their NetEnvelope via the pack licensing. By the time you read this, NetVoyage should offer a version that runs through your Web browser without special software or plug-ins. The Internet In addition to E-mail, the Internet offers a host of free and inexpensive ways to share documents among team members. FTP. If your machine is permanently connected to the Internet through something such as a high-speed connection through a corporate network, you can leave shared files on your computer for your team members to access. As long as they remember to return the modified document when they finish, your machine will always be the repository of the latest version. You accomplish this using a personal File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server. FTP is the default means of sharing files over the Internet. You can download a free personal Web server that includes an FTP server from the Microsoft Web site as part of Internet Explorer. The program is also included with Microsoft FrontPage, a Web site design program, and Windows 98. If you set up a personal Web server, be sure to restrict access and enforce passwords as needed to maintain your security. HTML. If you only need to let others read the document, and perhaps make comments via E-mail, you can take the fairly easy route of saving the document as a Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) file. Most programs now support saving files in the HTML format, which is the programming language used to design Web pages. Once the file is in HTML format, you can post it to your personal Web server if your computer is permanently connected to the Internet. You also can post it to a corporate or commercial Web server. While this approach isn't completely secure, visitors do have to know the Universal Resource Locator (URL, Web page address) to view the document. If no one creates a link to the URL on another Web page, it is unlikely to be picked up by the search engines, so unauthorized users cannot find it by searching. Posting a Web page has a couple of advantages over collaborating via E-mail. First, most of us receive so much E-mail that one more message is likely to be lost in the storm. Second, using a Web page saves team members from the temptation of replying to a message such as, "Tomorrow's meeting has been moved to 3 p.m." with a meaningless response such as, "Thanks, Jim." The Web page approach also lets team members view the documents on any PC with 'Net access, instead of being chained to a machine that hosts their regular E-mail account. Finally, this method lets team members read documents even if they do not have the software used to create them.
Once you post a document to your HotOffice account, team members with the necessary permissions can view the document online as an HTML file or they can download it to read and modify on their computers. Users can view the document as an HTML file from any Java-enabled browser. (Free Java plug-ins let a browser run special online applications.) Posting and retrieving files requires a machine with the HotOffice software installed and, of course, the necessary permission. HotOffice is useful based on this feature alone, but it does even more. Each HotOffice account includes a browser-based E-mail account, which lets you check your E-mail from any machine. Users can view attachments, which sometimes aren't supported by browser-based E-mail, as HTML files. Your account also includes a private chat room for real-time discussions and a bulletin board for discussing issues that do not require real-time discussions. For many small businesses, HotOffice can fill the role of an intranet (a private network that runs via Internet technology) without the investment in hardware or salary for an administrator. The service costs $12.95 per user per month, and users can be added or removed quickly as needed. The basic service includes 20MB of online storage per user, and additional space is available for $5 per 10MB. Suite Support When someone else makes changes to a document, you must be able to locate and deal with those changes quickly and easily. Many suite programs serve this need with features for tracking and managing revisions. Word, for example, provides the option of tracking changes. The program marks changes in red, with new text underlined and deleted text marked through. You then have the option of accepting the changes or ignoring them. Word also lets readers add comments to the document. Comments are flagged in the document with nearby words highlighted in a yellow shade that does not show up on the printed document. You view, edit, and delete the comments by placing the mouse cursor over the highlighted text. Each user can control the color of type used for their comments. To work with document tracking in Word 97, open the Tools menu and select Track Changes. Excel also lets you track changes, but the approach and process are significantly different from Word's. Excel lets team members view and edit the same worksheet, even at the same time if the worksheet is on a shared network. It remembers who made what changes to which cells, and even when. You can track the changes with color-coded comments on the worksheet, or by generating a report. You even can selectively accept or reject changes after the fact. Users can add comments to any cells; they come up as a red comment marker and appear when you place the mouse cursor over the cell. To track changes in Excel 97, open the Tools menu and select Track Changes. PowerPoint offers no document collaboration tools. This is a real weakness, since teams frequently work on presentations together. PowerPoint allows comments, but unless you specifically turn them off, they show up as part of a presentation. Corel WordPerfect Suite 8 includes Corel Versions. This solves the problem of controlling versions by letting you save new versions of the file without changing the file name. Changes suggested by team members become a new version. With Corel Versions, you can: • Retrieve any prior version of the document • View any prior version of the document • Compare versions to highlight the differences • Track multiple users of a common file • Accept or reject changes. Corel Versions gives you even more control over the team revision process than Microsoft Office, and the Corel suite's programs also allow comments. Let's Discuss This Of course, not all document collaboration takes place after the creation of draft documents. Team members begin a project by discussing the project and alternatives and then trying to reach a consensus on how to proceed. When everyone is located close together, you can have a meeting to resolve these issues. When a team has only a few scattered members, telephone calls and E-mail can handle the preliminary collaboration. With more than a few people on the team, however, conference calls and E-mail become much more difficult to handle. At this point Internet-based collaboration tools become most useful. These tools fall into the two broad categories of real-time tools and discussion tools. Real-time tools. Real-time tools require all the participating team members to be at their computers simultaneously, just as a conference call requires each team member to be at a phone. These tools fall into the categories of whiteboards and conferencing, although the categories tend to be combined into single programs. Conferencing carries video images and audio feeds from each member across a network. This requires each person to have a video camera, such as the $200 color QuickCam2 from Connectix. It also requires speakers and a microphone, which are generally included with most new computers. A conference is only practical when you have a high-speed Internet connection (which has a lot of bandwidth, or ability to carry data) and only a few people to participate. It really requires a direct 'Net connection, such as the T1 line available through many corporate networks. No one would want to view the tiny, jerky video and listen to the poor audio available through a modem connection. Whiteboards show a common computer screen to everyone. That screen can display a free-form drawing area or an application such as Word or Excel. Meeting participants can use their own computers to mark on this common screen, making this system a great way to collaborate on graphical projects such as technical diagrams. Whiteboards work better than conferencing with the restricted bandwidth of modems and more participants. Using the whiteboard requires a conference call, however, so modem users will need two phone lines. One of the best conferencing and whiteboard programs is Microsoft NetMeeting, which can be downloaded free from the Microsoft Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/netmeeting. Discussion tools. Discussion tools let team members post their comments at a time and from a place of their choosing. Other team members can read these comments at their convenience and post a reply. The process is similar to the system of public newsgroups on the Internet, only access is limited to team members. Typically, these tools support a threaded discussion where someone posts a question or topic and others either respond to the topic or respond to responses. HotOffice includes a Bulletin Board, which is a discussion tool. Only team members can join the discussions, which run via a Java applet so you can access the discussion from any browser. Deja News (http://www.dejanews.com) is a search service that specializes in helping users search, read, and post to Internet discussion groups. Deja News also hosts its own discussion groups such as Deja Communities. This area lets individuals, private groups, or even businesses set up free, advertising-supported discussion groups. They can be open to the public or limited to specific members. Like all Deja News services, Deja Communities is browser-based, which means you need no special software and can access the discussion group from any Internet-connected computer. The limited membership option and ease-of-access make this free service a perfect choice for team collaboration. Deja Communities doesn't let you post documents, but it works well when paired with an FTP server or HTML postings. One drawback to Deja Communities is its lack of tools for deleting a discussion group. As a result, you cannot delete the group after completing a project. This can be a serious concern if you're working on a sensitive project. Deja Communities is currently in beta testing, and its features could change in the final version, which should be available by the time you read this. Ready For Prime Time? All the programs mentioned in this article, except the suite programs, are specialized and some are from small companies. We have successfully tested all of them, on a corporate system with direct connections to the Internet and over a modem. Everything except publishing documents in HTML, however, took a significant amount of experimentation and study before we had everything working. To make matters more difficult, we suffered frequent PC lockups and had to reboot often during the process. Like most Web software, these programs tend to have more bugs and rough edges than the polished, commercial software you buy from the local computer store. New releases come quickly, and even companies come and go quickly. One whiteboard-only program scheduled to be included in our article was taken off the market during our research. Except for the suite programs, you can get free versions or trial versions of all the software and services mentioned in this article. Most of the categories discussed include good, competing programs you can try for free. Make sure they work on your system and you can get them working without too much of a headache before you buy. Otherwise, you might need more help from your teammates on tech support than on the project at hand.  by Ronny Richardson |
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