Document Collaboration has made leaps and bounds since explosion of technology revolution. In any business era, need to collaborate remains a constant. What varies is ability of technology to keep up with demands of collaborators. Groupware has risen to challenge, delivering solutions that streamline editorial process - tracking documents, sorting, and even merging documents, essentially answering who, what, when, where, and how of collaboration.

Even within family of groupware solutions, new technologies are available to take document collaboration to a higher level. Since all groupware technology is not created equal, it is important to search carefully. Millions of indexed pages on your favorite search engine become one groupware every business is looking for when searching through newest technologies available in groupware.

Digital Thread technology, Version History, and Document Signature services form a new “triple threat” in document collaboration technology. It is a time-saver, an energy-saver, and a money-saver.

In business efforts to preserve bottom line, effective management and thorough record keeping are paramount.

Consider following example:

Negotiations for a contract between company A and company B have been going on for months, with law firm C as author and mediator of contract. Three representatives from A and B have been part of a drafting committee with a partner from C, making a committee of seven, each with various electronic records of by laws, budgets, minutes, and memos. The deadline for final draft of contract falls due in a few weeks.

This could be a create-your-own-ending story, and you will see two alternative endings.

Every organization which creates collaborative documents, whether they are budgets, presentations, reports, spreadsheets, or other documents recognizes that collaborative efforts are requirement. That collaboration always forces 5 eternal document collaboration questions: Who? What? Where? When? How? The reason I refer to them as eternal is that every day businesses are faced with these questions and rarely find answers when they collaborate on documents.

Business frantically searched for groupware solutions that answers 5 questions of document collaboration, and this informational article is written to provide helpful information on technology that is now available to bring answers.

Three helpful groupware software technologies will be presented and referred to throughout this article as means of answer-finding, as a refreshing relief to more common question-making of collaboration. These technologies are Digital Thread technology, Version History technology, and Document Signature technology. These three groupware technologies function as “triple threat” against document chaos.

Who?

From start, it is important to state that accurate records are key to keeping track of editorial or collaborative process. So much record keeping gets jumbled because documents and drafts are spread out across many different places and collaborators like butter over too much bread. As deadline nears, searches become more frantic. “Who has which draft?” or “Who made this change?” are questions that will frequently arise.

Imagine finishing up months of contract negotiation yielding a contract of hundreds of pages and asking your committee at that point about changes that have been made in an effort to track who did or has what. It simply will not work. Not even participant will remember all of their own contributions.

No business wants messy records. The groupware market has advanced to such a point that a groupware solution to question “who?” is now available. Digital Thread, for example, creates a tracking device in meta data of all documents created in everyday MS applications businesses use. This tracking reaches across servers and emails to create a virtual family tree of document drafts, even if you are working with clients or others who do not have this technology. Version History compiles document family tree into a flowchart, and Document Signature lets you know who has worked on draft every time you open a draft from your hard drive or email. You will never lose track of who did or has what.

What?