Michael Sampson on Making Collaboration Work

Security and Collaboration Systems: Let's Not Forget the Simpler Actions

Written for Messaging News Magazine, this article looks at the topic of security and collaboration systems:

 

"There is no end to the investment you can make in securing your organization’s collaboration systems. In previous articles in this magazine, we have discussed collaboration system security from various perspectives: the risks in using hosted collaboration systems (2007), how to share documents in a secure way (2008), and most recently, a more general look at security considerations for collaboration systems (2009). But what happens if we make perfect investments in securing our collaboration systems, only to have end-users lose the devices they use to access those systems? With the proliferation of laptop- and smartphone-toting end-users, we have the makings of a disaster, if these devices are lost or compromised. What can we do to minimize these risks?"

 

Read the article online, at messagingnews.com.

Archiving and eDiscovery for Collaboration Systems

Written for Messaging News Magazine, this article looks at the topic of archiving and ediscovery for collaboration systems:

 

"Archiving and eDiscovery for email are a well-understood, even if not so well-practiced set of requirements; but compared to the current status of archiving and eDiscovery for collaboration systems, it’s the gold standard. In the email archiving space, there are many vendors and signs of market maturity. For example, the acquisitions to consolidate capability and acquire new technology. There are also examples from courts where email evidence has been critical, and given the back-and-forth conversational and interactional nature of email, archiving email messages is not hard.

 

Life is a bit more complex when it comes to collaboration systems though, and for our purposes, that means systems like SharePoint, Lotus Quickr, Lotus Connections, Oracle Beehive, Central Desktop, Socialtext, and many, many more. What follows is a look at current regulations, a discussion about archiving and eDiscovery for collaboration systems, and some thoughts about what this means for organizations."

Read the article online, at messagingnews.com.

Mobile and Wireless Access to Collaboration Systems: What's Happened?

Written for Messaging News Magazine, this article looks at the current state of mobile and wireless access to collaboration systems, at August 2009:

 

"Three years ago I wrote about the state of play with mobile and wireless device access to collaboration systems, such as instant messaging, collaborative workspaces, and customer relationship management (CRM). By “mobile and wireless device” I was referring to small form-factor devices, such as smartphones and PDAs, rather than their bigger brethren, the laptop. The general rule I proposed was “whenever a group of users make a system their habitat for collaborative work, mobile access will probably be required.” At that time I ultimately concluded that mobile and wireless access to instant messaging and CRM systems was pretty good, but access to collaborative workspaces was pretty bad. The purpose of this article is to review what’s happened during the past three years and give a state of play as of August 2009."

 

Read the article online, at messagingnews.com.

Security Threats in Collaboration Platforms

Written for Messaging News Magazine, this article considers a variety of oft-neglected security threats for collaboration software platforms.

 

"Like beauty, you want security over collaboration platforms to be much more than skin deep. Security must be designed from the ground up, not treated as an after-thought. With an increasing volume of business conversations and transactions being communicated, coordinated and managed through collaboration tools, security is paramount. For the purpose of this article, we are considering collaboration platforms like Microsoft SharePoint, 37signals Basecamp, Traction Software Team Page, and others. We’re not looking at email, but rather tools that provide a separate “space” for an authorized group of people to share documents, track tasks, coordinate meetings, and manage the other details of a joint project."

 

Read the article online, at messagingnews.com.

Making Collaboration Tools Pro-Knowledge Sharing

Written for Messaging News Magazine, this article considers how collaboration software can enhance knowledge sharing.

 

"If you embrace the use of a collaborative workspace platform in your organization—think Microsoft SharePoint team sites, IBM Quickr, 37signals Basecamp, Central Desktop, etc.—are you improving or degrading the ability of your employees to share their knowledge?"

 

Read the article online, at messagingnews.com.

The Changing Locus of Collaboration

Written for Messaging News Magazine, this article considers the emergence of a second locus of collaboration in organizations.

 

"There is a change underway in the world of collaboration within organizations, and it opens a whole new arena of collaborative possibilities. Rather than only supporting explicit collaboration, there is a whole new set of vendors and products that enable implicit collaboration within organizations. This means the work of an individual can count toward the benefit of others and the organization, without the person being explicitly aware that they are doing so."

 

Read the article online, at messagingnews.com.

Extending Single User Applications for Collaboration

Comments on how to extend single user applications for collaborative situations, and the factors to look out for. Considers the example of eXpresso's collaboration extensions for Microsoft Excel.

 

"When just one other person was involved, the ping-pong effect by email worked fine, but when multiple people were asked to review and comment, the original author faced a tremendously difficult job of incorporating all the suggestions into a new master document or spreadsheet. For such group situations with Excel, eXpresso is trying to change the paradigm for collaboration by going back to the underlying application and adding capabilities to make it more group-friendly."

 

Extending Single User Applications for Collaboration
Originally published on messagingnews.com

The core applications that most information workers use on a daily basis are designed for individual use, not group use. Individuals would work in Word, Excel or PowerPoint until they were contented with the state of their work. Then collaboration was undertaken in one of two ways: hollering for an in-the-office colleague to come and look over the shoulder, or emailing the document or spreadsheet to an out-of-the-office colleague for review at an opportune moment. One provided synchronous interaction ("Sally, how about we word that paragraph a slightly different way?" or "John, let's change the forecasted market growth to 20 percent and see what happens"), the other asynchronous ("Sally, I have looked at your document and made some changes; please see the new version attached" or "John, thanks for the market forecast. I have made some changes and attach a new edition for your review"). When just one other person was involved, the ping-pong effect by email worked fine, but when multiple people were asked to review and comment, the original author faced a tremendously difficult job of incorporating all the suggestions into a new master document or spreadsheet. For such group situations with Excel, eXpresso is trying to change the paradigm for collaboration by going back to the underlying application and adding capabilities to make it more group-friendly.

eXpresso's approach is to provide a Web repository for users to store Excel spreadsheets, and then to render those spreadsheets within a Web browser so that one or more people can work on the spreadsheet simultaneously. Thus the initial user creates her spreadsheet on her local machine using Excel (an application most have and know how to use), and then when done, it is uploaded to an eXpresso account. The spreadsheet's creator can invite others to work on the spreadsheet in real-time (that is, multiple people can have the spreadsheet open in the browser and each can make changes to cells that the others get to see immediately), or the others can come in at any time and work on it. But there is always only one version, and the changes made by anyone are incorporated directly into the master edition.

There are some subtleties in group work that eXpresso has recognized and made provision for in the eXpresso service. Invited collaborators can be assigned different levels of access to the spreadsheet as a whole—some can only view it, others can edit it, while others can download and copy it. Going a step further, specific people can be given access rights to only a portion of the spreadsheet; meaning that edit rights aren't a binary decision ("yes" or "no") but rather give the ability to ask certain people to provide input on only some of the modeling (a point that I make in my 7 Pillars reference architecture for team collaboration. When multiple people are working together in real-time on the spreadsheet, they have an integrated instant messaging service so that the conversation about what's going on can be undertaken within the context of those changes (and the transcript of these sessions can be captured and stored with the spreadsheet for later review). In addition, eXpresso has added alerting, notification and audit capabilities so that others can be kept up-to-date with the changes that other people are making when they're not looking at the spreadsheet.

eXpresso is cognizant of the offline nature of work for people that travel frequently, and using a plug-in for Excel, permits a user to take a spreadsheet offline for local editing on a laptop, with full synchronization when the user next connects to the network. When someone takes the spreadsheet offline in this case, the eXpresso one is locked ("checked-out") so that others can't edit it.

Other spreadsheet collaboration service providers take a different route; EditGrid and Google, for example, provide an online spreadsheet where people can work together, and the resultant work can be exported as an Excel file when the collaborative work is done.
All in all, eXpresso is a great addition to Excel, and teams that work extensively with Excel should investigate further.

Secure Document Collaboration Approaches

Organizations that need to share documents in a secure way have special requirements. What are some of the approaches that work?

 

"When we need to share documents with other people, our default approach is to open email, start a new message, attach the document and hit send. We expect that it will be received, and we wait to hear back. For many of the document sharing situations we are involved with, this approach is good enough. But there are other situations, however, when much greater security, access control, auditability, and reliability are required. In these situations, email for document sharing is absolutely the wrong answer."

 

Read the article online, at messagingnews.com.

Investing in Collaboration Tools

Four key ideas to think through when developing your strategy for investing in collaboration tools.

 

"It is a huge responsibility to be charged with articulating and implementing a collaboration strategy for an organization. Fundamentally, it requires structuring the way that people interact with others. It comes with great power for good or bad. Therefore, before taking action consider these four key points ..."

 

Read the article online, at messagingnews.com.

Why Closed Doesn't Work for Collaborative Workspaces

A research report that evaluates how the lack of interoperability in collaborative workspace products and services is hampering adoption.

 

"This report is about why collaborative workspaces haven't been adopted, why email continues to be the default medium for communication / coordination / collaboration, and what we "the industry" need to do about it. At a fundamental level, and looking across the demands put on people today, it argues that today's collaborative workspace offerings make it more difficult for people to communicate in comparison to email. Architectural "closedness" is preventing adoption. This used to be the case with email, but it changed. It used to be the case with instant messaging, but it is changing. It is the case with collaborative workspaces, and change is needed."

 

Download the report (registration required).