User-Oriented Authorization in Collaborative Environments

Access rights for collaborative systems tend to be rather complex, leading to difficulties in the presentation and manipulation of access policies at the user interface level. We confront a theoretical access rights model with the results of a field study which investigates how users specify access policies. Our findings suggest that our theoretical model addresses most of the issues raised by the field study, when the required functionality can be presented in an appropriate user interface

Visual and interactive tool for product development process enhancement: towards intuitive support of co-located project review

Part 2: PLM EcosystemInternational audienceProduct life management refers to every method or tools which participate to the collaboration of actors involved along the product life. The main topic concerns the organization of this cycle by mastering the evolution between its various phases. Collaboration is a main bottleneck since every phase will involve different experts. The main issue in collaboration is to ensure a good understanding of requirements and constraints of collaborators and to manage conflicts between different experts. Negotiations are expected to solve potential conflicts. This is usually done in project review where the experts must converge towards a common solution. In this paper we investigate the efficiency of a tool formalizing and structuring the project review activity. This tool takes advantage of emerging technologies, here a multi-touch table. We illustrate the discussion with a use case concerning the development of personal computer housing

SoNeUCONADM: the administrative model for SoNeUCONABC usage control model

The popularity of Web Based Social Networks (WBSNs) encourages their enhancement. Many WBSN data is considered personal data and access control management plays a key role in this regard. The point is not only to manage access control but to determine how administration should be performed. Based on SoNeUCONABC, an expressive usage control model that allows fine-grained access control management, this paper presents SoNeUCONADM, the complementary administrative model. Based on a pair of related and popular administrative models, the evaluation proves the completeness of SoNeUCONADM

Reflections on Ad Hoc Cooperative Teams

Colloque avec actes et comité de lecture. internationale.International audienceWe present in this paper our first reflections on the application of cooperative technologies into ad hoc networks domain. Our work aims at defining models concerned with both cooperation and ad hoc mobility. To do that, first we discuss some problems tied to the ad hoc deployment of a cooperation application already defined for wired networks. This discussion is motivated by the base on the ad hoc network specificities. Second, we give some guidelines to study the performance optimization of ad hoc protocols using cooperation technology

Dynamic Interconnection of Enterprise Workflow Processes

Colloque avec actes et comité de lecture. internationale./http://www.taylorandfrancis.co.uk/International audienceDue to business process automation development, process interconnection becomes an important matter. Actually, process interconnection mechanisms are indispensable to co-ordinate business processes within and beyond organisation boundaries, aiming, for instance, to strength awareness inside virtual enterprises, to facilitate multinational e-transactions, etc. Therefore, thinking and proposing mechanisms to ensure interconnection between organisational business processes is becoming a hot research topic. Actually, existing business process modelling and enactment systems (workflow systems, project management tools, shared agendas, to do lists, etc.) have been mainly developed to suit enterprise internal needs. Thus most of these systems are not adapted to inter-enterprise co-operation. As we are interested in workflow process integration, we aim, through this paper, to provide a model supporting dynamic inter-enterprise workflow process interconnection.We consider the interconnection of enterprise workflow processes as the management of a workflow of workflows in which several heterogeneous workflow management systems (WFMS) coexist. This paper introduces our process interconnection model, its implementation, and its validation through an experimentation

FORUM: Modelo e Linguagem para Especificação de Regras em Ambientes Colaborativos

Collaborative environments development has significantly increased in the last years, as well as the complexity of such systems and the search for better quality. On the collaborative environment development, the definition of precise rules set is important to allow correct interactions among the actors. The goal of this work is to present Forum, a model and a language to specify rules for collaborative environments, helping software designers to make rules specification to support a high level of control in such environments.O desenvolvimento de ambientes colaborativos vem crescendo significativamente nos últimos anos, acompanhado pelo aumento da complexidade e das exigências de melhor qualidade. No desenvolvimento de ambientes colaborativos é fundamental a definição de um conjunto preciso de regras que estabeleçam as interações permitidas entre os atores do ambiente. O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar o Forum, um modelo e uma linguagem para a especificação de regras em ambientes colaborativos, auxiliando os projetistas de software a definirem uma especificação precisa da interatividade

A component-based collaboration infrastructure

Groupware applications allow geographically distributed users to collaborate on shared tasks. However, it is widely recognized that groupware applications are expensive to build due to coordination services and group dynamics, neither of which is present in single-user applications. Previous collaboration transparency systems reuse existing single-user applications as a whole for collaborative work, often at the price of inflexible coordination. Previous collaboration awareness systems, on the other hand, provide reusable coordination services and multi-user widgets, but often with two weaknesses: (1) the multi-user widgets provided are special-purpose and limited in number, while no guidelines are provided for developing multi-user interface components in general; and (2) they often fail to reach the desired level of flexibility in coordination by tightly binding shared data and coordination services. In this dissertation, we propose a component-based approach to developing group- ware applications that addresses the above two problems. To address the first prob- lem, we propose a shared component model for modeling data and graphic user inter- face(GUI) components of groupware applications. As a result, the myriad of existing single-user components can be re-purposed as shared GUI or data components. An adaptation tool is developed to assist the adaptation process. To address the second problem, we propose a coordination service framework which systematically model the interaction between user, data, and coordination protocols. Due to the clean separation of data and control and the capability to dynamically "glue" them together, the framework provides reusable services such as data distribution, persistence, and adaptable consistency control. The association between data and coordination services can be dynamically changed at runtime. An Evolvable and eXtensible Environment for Collaboration (EXEC) is built to evaluate the proposed approach. In our experiments, we demonstrate two benefits of our approach: (1) a group of common groupware features adapted from existing single- user components are plugged in to extend the functionalities of the environment itself; and (2)coordination services can be dynamically attached to and detached from these shared components at different granules to support evolving collaboration needs

Daily Medical Team Briefings in Ambiente Collaborativo con Schermi Multi-Touch

Quotidianamente, le equipe mediche operanti nei reparti ad alto impatto sulla salute si riuniscono per discutere, caso per caso, lo stato e le terapie dei pazienti ricoverati nel proprio reparto. Queste riunioni, che richiedono la presenza di un nutrito gruppo di professionisti, sono in genere abbastanza concitate e richiedono di accedere con rapidità a dati e materiali di vario tipo. Attraverso un continuo confronto tra loro, che porta anche alla stesura di un verbale d'equipe, i partecipanti alla riunione decidono come procedere con la cura del paziente. Spesso però, in questi processi lavorativi, vi è una forte mancanza o inadeguatezza hardware e software di strumenti collaborativi, con la sola presenza di computer e software antiquati accompagnati da proiettori. Partendo da queste problematiche, si è voluto realizzare un prototipo in grado di supportare la collaborazione e la manipolazione del materiale dei pazienti per migliorare i meeting di equipe. Il prototipo consiste in una applicazione che fa uso di due schermi multi-touch: un coffee table e uno schermo a parete. Durante ogni sessione, l'applicazione è suddivisibile fino a quattro postazioni di lavoro per schermo, qui gli specialisti sono grado di visualizzare, manipolare e condividere il materiale di un paziente tra di loro, ma anche effettuare ricerche su internet, prendere appunti e redigere il verbale d'equipe. Tutto ciò avviene in modo sia individuale, perché ogni specialista lavora nella propria postazione, che cooperativo, in quanto i dati di una sessione sono condivisi tra i due schermi e facilmente spostabili da una postazione all'altra. Questo approccio permette di promuovere la collaborazione ed è in grado di aumentare l'efficacia dei briefing medici. I processi riguardanti la raccolta dei requisiti e le riunioni volte alla valutazione di ogni release, sono state svolte con la partecipazione del personale dell’AUSL della Romagna