Collaboration Services Specification MITRE Dr. Mark T. Maybury Executive Director Information Technology Center “Technical Solutions that Make a Difference” Organization: G060 Project: AA

2 9/7/ :45 MITRE G060 Evolution of Market Offerings Asynchronous Collaboration Solutions Synchronous Collaboration Solutions Integrated Collaboration Environments 0 Document-centric, share information and ideas 0 0 Bulletin boards / discussion databases 0 Information sharing tools / Intranets 0 Group calendaring 0 Meeting-centric, interactive and share in creation process 0 Supports formal and ad hoc collaborations 0 Text chatter 0 Shared whiteboards 0 Application sharing / screen sharing 0 LAN-based video and audio conferencing 0 Place-based, support all models of collaboration -Synchronous and asynchronous -People as core component -Persistence

3 9/7/ :45 MITRE G060 Example Participant View: MITRE’s Collaborative Virtual Workspace (CVW)

4 9/7/ :45 MITRE G060 Collaboration Server Architecture (Services) Context InstrumentationDirectoryConferencingProcessArchiveSecurity DocumentSearchTool Users/Participants/Roles Semantic Collab Asymmetric Collaboration Event Support Interactive Multimodal Participants

5 9/7/ :45 MITRE G060 Services View Object Request Broker Object Services Application Objects Common Facilities C4ISRFinancialMedical Collaboration Facilities Task Management User Interface Systems Management Information Management ContextParticipantConference Vertical Markets Horizontal Facilities

6 9/7/ :45 MITRE G060 Context (1 of 2) 0 Contexts are the persistent, objective focal point for organizing and containing activities, people/agents, information/data, and applications. 0 They also provide the integration point for -Conferences -Instrumentation -Context-specific capabilities -Security 0 Foundation for collaboration metaphor -End-user experience metaphor?

7 9/7/ :45 MITRE G060 Context (2 of 2) 0 Contexts maintain -A list of Participants -A ConferenceManager for conferences -A Folder of user-published objects 0 Contexts may relate to -Plan nodes (objectives) -Process -Organization (logistics cell) -Functional area -Individual users (private offices) -Reimplement room/building metaphor 0 Ability to join a context is regulated by Role-based access controls

8 9/7/ :45 MITRE G060 Context Directory 0 Maintains the searchable directory of Contexts 0 Creates locally-hosted Contexts 0 Registers Contexts hosted elsewhere

9 9/7/ :45 MITRE G060 Role 0 Participants present a set of Roles they are representing in a Context or Conference 0 Roles are both informational and used for access control 0 A tree rooted at “all users” relates all roles 0 Access control by name via personal roles 0 Credentials are used to authenticate the proposed use of a Role all userslogistics human user adminSmith security officer Doe

10 9/7/ :45 MITRE G060 Context Participant Context Member Conference ContextDirectory Credential CollabRole Folder

11 9/7/ :45 MITRE G060 Context Distribution 0 Design allows Contexts to be hosted on distinct physical machines -If a Context will primarily be used on a particular LAN, it can be moved there -Reduce network bandwidth, improve latency -Still available to outside users -Suggested that centers of excellence may leave contexts available during day-to-day use -Will be attempted in phase 2 0 Context Server design could be replicated -Not necessary for distributed demo -Will be investigated as time and priority permits

12 9/7/ :45 MITRE G060 What do Contexts and Roles do for me? 0 Contexts provide a workspace management tool -Switch between sets of tools, data and collaborators by switching contexts -Facilitates discovery of people and useful information for users working similar problems 0 Roles control access to tools and data -…but also provide cues to which visualizations are appropriate for a particular user’s task 0 Role will be related to eventual security architecture 0 To be effective, Role and Context information must be propagated throughout the JFACC system -User interface across the system needs this -Back-end tools may need Role/Credential information to decide access

13 9/7/ :45 MITRE G060 Participant 0 Models a “user” of the system -Human user or software agent -Independent of location/connection 0 Contains information required to visually present the Participant (name, rank, address) 0 Has a set of Roles known to be available 0 Lists Contexts currently a member of

14 9/7/ :45 MITRE G060 Participant Directory 0 Searchable directory of Participants -By role -By name -By search language (soon) 0 Maintains availability information 0 Delivers “pages” or “instant messages” to Participants and Roles -Could easily fall back to /pager/… for disconnected Participants 0 Is this the authoritative directory service for users in the JFACC system?

15 9/7/ :45 MITRE G060 Participant Human Participant Software Participant Credential CollabRole Participant Directory

16 9/7/ :45 MITRE G060 Conference 0 A Conference is a single-medium collaboration 0 Provides -A roster of Participants and their Roles in the Conference -Media type and suggested application -Access control 0 A ConferenceManager organizes and manages Conferences inside of a Context

17 9/7/ :45 MITRE G060 Conference Context ParticipantConference Participant Schema Conference Data Conference Mcast Conference Credential CollabRole Conference Manager Node Controller...

18 9/7/ :45 MITRE G060 Conference design 0 Conference is designed as an interface 0 JCS supports third-party integration of sessional collaboration systems against the Conference API 0 Conference objects may be hosted anywhere on the network 0 Network impact dependent on Conference implementation -For example, chatter Conferences typically contain a message exploder collocated with the Conference object -Audio/video conferences as MulticastConference communicate peer-to-peer

19 9/7/ :45 MITRE G060 Conference implementations 0 TextConference implements basic chat capabilities 0 MulticastConference models multicast streaming media conferences -vat (audio), nv (video), wb (whiteboard) -Allows heterogeneous clients for a media type 0 DataConference provides a simple generic event distribution mechanism with support for roster and late join -Suggested base for application developers -SDK includes Java-oriented API

20 9/7/ :45 MITRE G060 C2SchemaConference (under development) 0 Supports synchronous collaboration on C2Schema objects 0 Users work on tentative “draft” objects to be eventually relinked to plan 0 Provides field-level change notification 0 An additional application-specific channel allows broadcast of view-specific events (scrolling around map, presentation change) 0 Current implementation uses CORBA DII 0 FineC2 support in design phase

21 9/7/ :45 MITRE G060 Intelligent Multimodal Participants (IMPs)

22 9/7/ :45 MITRE G060 Collaboration Relationships Context Participant Conf Relationships Conf Ctx Member