Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 6. “Beyond Commenting”
From a document, the users could quickly start
and online chat with the author and other interested
peers. Clicking on “Discuss this” would show the
chat-system status of the author and all the users
that have interacted with the document, grouped
by the level of interaction. The user could now
select which of those people need to be part of
the discussion. If one of them is offline, the user
would have the option to issue a meeting request
for an online or offline meeting, or she could make
sure the missing user gets an emailed transcript
of the discussion. She could then start the chat
with all the available parties. The contents of the
chat would become part of the documents profile,
adding to the richness of its context.
The user could also use offline means to dis-
cuss the document, by subscribing to a NEWS:
newsgroup specifically for the document. From
that moment on, her newsreader (e.g. Outlook
Express) would receive all information updates
pertaining to this document. She could also post
comments offline; the system would merge them
at the appropriate time and place into the discus-
sions.
When the user would schedule a meeting, the
system would create a placeholder for the docu-
ment that will contain the meeting minutes of the
conversation. The user could attach audio proto-
col files, which the system would automatically
convert to text (see more info in “Non-Structured
Content” below). The system would remind the
user to post the results of the meeting after a
certain grace period.
Mel started to use the repository to capture the
decision making process extensively. Per his
request, the call provider recorded the weekly
project teleconference call to MP3. He posted
the results protocol together with the recording
to the repository. The system-generated transcript
proved invaluable in later discussion. The system
did not yet recognize different voices and tied
them to people, but it did show the discussions
in a searchable way.
“Tres Facet Auditorium”
A particular feature of a modern repository should
be the inability of the original author to declare
a document “completed”. This effectively pre-
vents content dumping, since peers would need
to review and accept all new content before it is
considered completed. To prevent abuse, at least
two peers would need to agree on the maturity
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