Chatting on Yahoo messenger or MSN messenger in the office just got approval! Online chatting, once considered taboo in the workplace is now the standard form of communication after email. Communicating with team members, sharing information and collaborating on other tasks like online meetings and seminars through a chat server are fast becoming commonplace in today.

Welcome to the collaborative tools of the new millennium. Augmenting traditional collaborative tools like email and acquiring business-related features like application sharing, threaded discussions and whiteboard features, instant messaging and other collaborative tools are changing the work place of today.

You may ask why? Why can't people just meet and talk to each other like they've been doing since ages? Well, in situations where business projects get more and more complex and people work in virtual workstations remotely, it becomes imperative to meet often and discuss issues. Conversations in the new era!

The dispersed work forces of today face increased competition and decreased product cycles. At this critical juncture, collaboration between employees and business partners is a must. Collaboration tools are an important means for turning the travel time and expense of old into work time and increased profits. Integrated collaboration tools that combine collaboration and enterprise applications can streamline the workflow process in an organization.

Even with teams working in the same location, online discussions permit individual thinking and introspective chatting (of course, brainstorming in actual meetings has its advantages too) thus allowing teams to add value through reflective thinking.

With new vendors popping up everywhere offering an assortment of collaborative tools ranging from web conferencing to integrated suites like knowledge repositories that enable document sharing, meeting and conversations, collaboration is predicted to be one of the top trends today. By enabling business processes to flow smoothly both internally and externally to the organization they ensure holistic business process automation.

Collaborative virtual workspace tools
Collaboration tools fill in all the gaps. Gaps of all kinds, those that exist between people, applications and organizations.

A distributed or virtual team is a group of workers who are not co-located but need to work and collaborate together in specific projects. Designing a virtual team and monitoring performance on projects can become difficult in these cases.

Collaboration tools range from simple to complex backend systems. Some of the new e-mail-based collaboration software is designed to streamline project management and workflow and allow workers to collaborate on processes such as invoicing, purchasing, expense reporting, and project management. This also facilitates easy Human Resource Management.

The creation of dynamic project-level teams, facilitates instant collaboration among users, and allows file sharing, attachment distribution, and creation of polls and alerts. Collaborative project planning improves visibility of departments and what they are doing and shares their solutions and needs with the right people involved in the project. Deepening collaboration in the enterprise portal can improve employee productivity and customer-facing relationships.

Phone, fax and email are the earliest examples of collaborative technologies. Although limited in their applications they are the most pervasive forms of collaboration. But in terms of project collaboration, they fail to maintain information context and relevance. First generation online technologies such as email, listserv and electronic team rooms are not really optimized for creating effective distributed teams. Email is optimized for one-to-one communications while conference calls cannot really sustain conversations in an extended environment. None of these tools are fundamentally designed for enhancing teamwork.

Virtual workplaces allow team members to store files, check calendars and conduct discussions. The digital workspace is a web-based collaborative environment that enables companies to innovate and drive projects to completion.

Collaboration is not limited to file sharing and static documents. It's much more dynamic in nature and entails calendars, timelines and milestones, planned and unplanned ad hoc interactions that in turn tightly integrate with time management and project management software applications.

It extends beyond the organization and the traditional methods of collaboration. Collaboration aids participants at different locales to work together in a synchronous manner, while synchronous collaboration supports on-going project work and takes into account ad hoc ideas and suggestions.

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