Leveraging the Power of Collaboration SAB Web Requirements Leveraging the Power of Collaboration Susan K. Land Vitality Chair

Collaboration Collaborative sites should provide places to capture and share ideas, information, communication, and documents. The sites should facilitate team participation in discussions, shared document collaboration, and surveys. By using a collaborative environment, users will be able to share information in order to achieve a better product faster with some degree of oversight and controls.

Communities SAB Standards Committees Working Groups AdCom Chairs, ExComs, MBs Working Groups Chairs, Principle Authors, Contributors

Lessons Learned Internet-based participants are excellent for review and feedback but less useful for writing new materials. Facilitate a way to remove non-participating members Site MUST be easily customizable to facilitate volunteer creation and maintenance. Leverage off of existing IEEE infrastructure for hosting and maintenance. A way to control site access and any associated mailing list should be provided.

Information Sharing Users should be able to find and communicate with key contacts and experts, both by e-mail and with instant messaging. Site content should be easily searched, with users receiving alerts to tell them when existing documents and information has been changed, or when new information or documents have been added.

File Sharing Instead of storing files in directories, a collaborative environment should supply users with: Document storage and retrieval Check-in and check-out functionality Version history Users should be able to find and share data, with the added assurance that data will not be lost.

Team Community A collaborative planning tool should support: Threaded discussions (on-line conversations including history) to include alerts. Portal communities of practice to include the definition of user access restriction, alerts, calendars, meeting workspaces, task/issue lists The ability for the system user to create custom lists.

Site Administration The system should provide for site administration to include troubleshooting; to include system users access and privileges, user alerts, and a site access log. Site content and layout should allow for customization by site managers, and Web Parts should be used to present targeted information to specific users on precise topics.

Site Administration – Cont. Administrators should be able to monitor and moderate a Member’s participation when necessary. Security and task responsibilities should be both flexible and easily accessible. Administrators should be able to save well-designed lists as templates so that they may be reused.

Capabilities Summary Should take file storage to a new level, providing communities for team collaboration, making it easy for users to work together on documents, tasks, contacts, events, and other information. Team and site managers should be able to coordinate site content and user activity easily. The collaborative environment should be designed for easy and flexible deployment, administration, and application development.