A Model and Architecture to support Asynchronous Collaboration Medes in Intranets

Abstract

The typical synchronous collaboration solutions have been proved to be rather unacceptable when work conditions avoid group members to work on-line. This can be the case when people are geographically distributed among different time zones with no (or few hours of) overlapping work-time or when difficult network (transmission) problems occur. For those cases, the support of asynchronous collaboration environments would be highly desirable. Through them, people have the possibility to work locally and to exchange cyclically within each other their contributions. A process of annotation and explicit authoring of each private editing shall be kept while the shared documents circulate. This paper examines the importance of supporting asynchronous fonns of collaboration and presents a global model and architecture for a related environment. Some fundamental concepts are established along with implementation considerations and strategies we have adopted during the development phase of a prototype system. An example of application in the area of distributed CAD is also included.