Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
508728 | Computers in Industry | 2006 | 10 Pages |
The development of customisable working environments that not only manage information and communication, but also support the work processes of organisations is very important. In this paper we describe a collaborative approach that offers customisation in terms of the modes of collaboration that can be used alternatively in different stages of a project, i.e. synchronous and asynchronous, for two main classes of documents, textual and graphical. Moreover, by using a hierarchical structure for representing the documents, we offer a flexibility of working at different granularity levels. We highlight the fact that the real-time and asynchronous modes of communication use the same basic mechanisms for maintaining consistency in the collaborative environments.