Online Collaboration

Online Collaboration serves as the foundation for Teamwork and Efficiency…

Most people are accustomed to working within applications when it comes to writing documentation. Microsoft Word and other “Word Processing” systems have become the norm. When writing a book, or putting out a highly graphical publication, other software such as Illustrator may be used, and PDFs are becoming the common format for “distributing” materials. However for this example, I’m going to focus on the most common “work method” for standard businesses – the creation of “documents”.

Open Word, start writing, save the file, EMail it to your boss/team members, shuffle it around in your online folders depending on the theme, revisit the file six months later and forget where you put it. Sound familiar?

What if your word processor was an online space where your updates were stored remotely, all revisions were tracked, and others could both review and modify your work, all through a browser? You never have to worry about floating DOC files, misplacing them, losing them, or sending them to co-workers. You just share a link.

This is just one example of using an online collaborative space. While this sounds great and people are excited at such ideas, they don’t realize how difficult it is to change their habits to working online and outside of the traditional “local document” space.

This is a key part of training. Getting into the habit of managing an online space and online pages (which serves as the core documentation for a business) is something that takes time. Pairing that with other collaboration tools such as a Task Tracking system, and for those companies that need it, a more robust source code asset repository system, companies quickly find out the power of Collaborative work is really in the way people use the technology rather than the technology itself.