Recent Developments
In recent years the market has seen a rapid development in document collaboration tools. Primitive document collaboration used email, whereby comments would be written in the email with the document attached. The problem was that this was not a document-centric solution (i.e. Comments and discussions around the document were separate from the document itself). Today, the best document collaboration tools are more document-centric. These systems provide a user with a document-centric collaboration experience because they allow users to tag the document and add content specific comments, maintaining a complete version history and records and storing all comments and activities associated around a document. For this reason, an increasing number of firms are using email less and file sharing and document collaboration tools more.
These new innovations are only possible because of the development of cloud computing, whereby software and applications are provisioned on the Internet, or "the cloud". New solutions for document collaboration make heavy use of the cloud, with files uploaded to be viewed in the cloud. The first HTML5 online word processor, announced at CeBIT 2012 is among the most recent achievements.
Most analysts agree that the best cloud collaboration tools:
- Use real-time commenting and instant messaging features to enhance speed of project delivery
- Leverage presence indicators to identify when others are active on documents owned by another person
- Allow users to set permissions and manage other users' activity profiles
- Allow users to set personal activity feeds and email alert profiles to keep abreast of latest activities per file or user
- Allow the user to collaborate and share files with users outside the company firewall
- Comply with company security and compliance framework
- Ensure full auditability of files and documents shared within and outside the organization
- Reduce workarounds for sharing and collaboration on large files
Read more about this topic: Document Collaboration
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