A framework for raising collaboration levels on the internet

People in most business processes still use the basic technologies such as e-mail or intranet information portals to collaborate on the Internet. Collaboration is thus primarily restricted to sharing of documents and comments between individuals or within small groups. The paper examines ways to provide higher levels of support for collaboration especially for collaboration in the large. The paper first defines levels of collaboration and technologies available to support each level. It then develops a definition of collaboration capability in terms of these levels and proposes methods that use collaboration capability levels to define collaboration requirements for particular applications. It then provides ways to extend workspaces to support collaboration in the large. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006