Groupware is  popularly used for organisational knowledge management. However, present  features of groupware, arguably, only allow very limited knowledge management  to be carried out

Cheah, Yu-N

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Enhancing Groupware for Knowledge ManagementYu-N CheahSchool of Computer SciencesUniversiti Sains MalaysiaI1800 USM Penang, Malaysiayncheah@cs.usm.myAbstract - Groupware li popularly used fororganisational knowledge management. However,nlesenlf-eatures of groupware, arguably, only allow verylimited knowledge monagement to be carried out. Moitgrouryare only function as a suite of generic tools, andits ability to provide effective lmowledge managementdepends on how it is used by an organisation,semployees or users. In this paper, an experimentalgroupware called KM-Groupware is presented. ncontains functions that broaden the spectrum oflutowledge management functions of current groupware.For this parpose, a selection of three tools has beenenhanced and integrated, i.e. a document managementtool, a blogging tool, and an e-mail client.Keywords: Knowledge management, groupware,document management, blog, e-mail1 IntroductionGroupware is a popular means for organisationalemployees to communicate and collaborate via a suite ofcomputer applications. Common groupware applicationsare e-mail, calendar, shared file repository, forum,bulletin board, etc. Examples of groupware are IBM,sLotus Notes, Novell's Groupwise as well as theOpenGroupware initiative.Presently, groupware is widely used to enforce somelevel of organisational knowledge management [l], i.e.by allowing collaboration and sharing of ideas anddocuments. However, with the present features ofgroupware, they arguably only allow very limitedknowledge management to be carried out. Mostgroupware are top-down in nature and only funcfion as asuite of generic tools. Its ability to provide effectiveknowledge management depends on how it is used by anorganisation's employees or users [2]. For instance, notrnany users share e-mails or documents that containproblem solving knowledge effectively on a wide-scale.In this paper, Knowledge-Based DocumentManagement Tools for Groupware or just simply KM-Groupware is presented. It is an experimental groupwarewhich contains fimctions that broadens the spectrum ofknowledge management functions that are available incurrent groupware. KM-Groupware aims to providefeatures that "enforce" knowledge management uponorganisational employees. For this pu{pose, three toolshave been integrated: a document management tool, ablogging tool, and an e-mail client. Although essentialtythese tools are not new to most groupwaxe, the functionsof these three common tools have been enhanced to allowbetter knowledge management. KM-Groupware alsointroduces some elements of Web 2.0 [3] with itsblogging, interactivity, and community-based features.2 MethodologyIn the process of developing the KM-Groupware (seeFigure l), the areas of knowledge management that arelacking in present groupware were identified. Then,applications that could be enhanced to complanentexisting groupware were identified. Following this,specific enhancements were chosen. These enhancementscould be incorporated into these applications whichwould "steer" users towards practicing knowledgemanagement rather that just making use of theapp lication's regular features.Figure l. The KM-Groupware methodology2.1 Knowledge management deticiencies ingroupwareFrom general observation,. current groupware dohave the potential to manage knowledge. However, tleylack in ensuring that knowledge is actually beingmanaged. For example, although groupware e-mailclients are useful for knowledge creation, sharing andreuse, e-mails in most cases are only read while they arestill new. Older e-mails which may contain usefulinformation and knowledge are often forgotten. Asanother example, file databases, while having thepotential for knowledge organisation, sharing and reuse,are rarely utilised effectively for the purpose of theseknowledge management tasks.Therefore, current groupware are still lacking in theareas of knowledge creation, knowledge organisation,knowledge sharing, and knowledge utilisation/reuse.2452.2 Choice of aPPlicationsBased on the deficiencies of current groupware' achoice of tools was made, i.e. document managementtools, blogging tools, and e-mail clients. These would beenhanced to complement existing groupwareapplications.Document management tools are essential for storingthe ouputs of the employees and would be useful forknowledge sharing, organisation, and reuse. Outputs maybe in the form ofreports, presentations, spreadsheets, etc.Blogging tools are currently not a common groupwareapplication but they are popular outside of groupwarecircles to express opinions and ideas. This makes it anexcellent candidate, with some enhancements, forknowledge creation and sharing [4]' E-mail clients beingone of the most widely used computer application, is alsoan obvious choice for enhancement t5l t6l. E-mail clientscan address knowledge creation, sharing and reuse'2.3 Enhancements to the applicationsHaving decided on three applications, the followingsubsections discuss the enhancements that could beincorporated into the chosen applications and motivationsbehind these enhancements.2.3.1 DocumentmanagementDocument management tools, although widelyincorporated into groupware, leave much of the task ofknowledge organisation and reuse to the user. Therefore,document management tools in groupware could beenhanced with text analysis/text mining features to addmetadata to documents being stored. Metadata could bein the form ofextracted keywords, subject headings and ashort summary. The metadata could then be used toorganise the repository of documents and to enhance theaccuacy of document search.2.3.2 Blogging toolCurrent blogging tools provide users with an interfaceto type in the post title and the text of the post. Otherinformation includes the timestamp, author, conunentsand trackback. These are sufficient in most bloggingsituations, especially for regular journal or diary writingpurposes. However, to facilitate organisationalknowledge creation and sharing, it would beadvantageous if users/authors are allowed to customisethe fields of the blog posts, i.e. to include other detailsthat suit the requirements of the working environment.This allows blogs to be used for work-related reporting orsharing of problems and solutions.Another enhancement to the organisational bloggingexperience would be to allow follow-up posting, i.e' to beable to select a previous post and write a new post as afollow-up. This is useful when readers are interested toknow the history of a particular post.2.3.3 E-mailMost users are accustomed to an e-mail client thatallows one to send and receive e-mails, and perhaps evenset filters to organise e-mail. In an organisation, e-mailcommunication facilitates problem solving and sharing ofideas. However, only newer e-mails are given attentionand much of the old e-mails are often just "archived" andare rarely used to solve similar problems in future. Thereis also the issue of the volume of e-mail messages beingsent within the organisation. The large number of e-mailsmakes it difficult to appreciate good problem solving e-mails or ideas.E-mail clients could be enhanced with a hybrid ofdiscussion group and review features [7]. This allowsusers to consult a group ofusers, i.e. anyone having thesame e-mail client, and receive replies and solutions fromthe group. The replies and solutions are rated byeveryone in the group. This enhancement allows e-mailsto be effectively used for knowledge creation, sharingand reuse. Besides the subject heading, keywords can beincluded to make it easier to organise e-mails.3 ImplementationBased on the three applications, a prototlrye KM-Groupware was developed to integrate the threeapplications. The three applications were named KM-Document Manager, KM-Blog, and KM-Mail (see Figure2).Figure 2. KM-Groupware overyiew2463.1 KM-DocumentManagerThe nerve of the KM-Groupware is the KM-Document Manager which primarily has sub-modules foruploading, downloading and viewing of documents,adding and editing text documents, searching fordocuments, and audit trail. A sample audit trailscreenshot is shown in Figure 3.The enhancement incorporated into this applicationfocuses on the upload sub-module which requires users toinclude the document title, description and metadata(context, keywords, etc.). Submission of the documentwould tigger a simple keyword exhaction feature toextract additional keywords by analysing word frequencyafter stop words have been removed. The results areranked and the most frequent z nurnber of words arechosen as additional keywords. The value of n isproportionate to the length of the document.For document downloading, the user would first beshown a list of docurnents and the relevant documenttitle, metadata and additional keywords.The search sub-module (see Figure 4) involveschecking through the metadata and all keywords of thedocuments in the repository. The search sub-module isextended to the KM-Blog and KM-Mail tools in view thatblog posts and e-mails are by themselves also documents.Figure 4. Viewing a searched document3.2 KM-BlogAs mentioned earlier, the value-added feature of theKM-Blog tool is the customisable nature of the postfields. Therefore, in the blog configuration interface,users have the option of setting the number of fieldsrequired and the field+ypes. This allows KM-Blog toadapt to different purposes, e.g. medical case reportingwhich would require fields such as the title, observation,sigas and symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, etc. Thenumber of fields can be changed at any time and everynew post refers to this updated configuration for therequired field details. Any changes to the number offields do not affect previous posts. Viewing of previousposts would maintain the original number of fields.Another enhanced feature is the inclusion of follow-upposts. This is essentially a new post except that the userbegins by identifting a previous post of interest whilebrowsing the blog (see Figure 5). On the interface of theprevious post, the user is allowed to perform a follow-up(see Figure 6). A hyperlink (or permalink) of the previouspost would be automatically inserted into the new post toindicate a relationship between the two posts. Whenviewing the list of available posts, the presence of follow-up posts is also indicated.sru12as'luuur) aa!adFigure 3. Viewing a document audit trail247Figure 5. Selecting relevant posts to follow-up.Figure 6. Posting a follow-up3.3 KM-MailIn this application, a user wanting to share a problemis provided with a special interface similar to that forcomposing a new e-mail. In this interface, the user isrequired to specifr a group ofrecipients and the problemdescription in the subject field and e-mail body. These aresent to everyone in the group. Subsequent replies withsolutions and comments to the problem description fromthe group members would be sent to everyone in thegroup. These solutions and comments can then be ratedby everyone (see Figure 7). These rafings would be sentto everyone in the group and the collective rating for thatparticular reply (solution or comment) would becalculated and displayed in everyone's e-mail folder. Thee-mail ID is therefore important to hack replies.To organise e-mails, the user is provided with aninterface to speciff categories of e-mail. Each category isspecified separately by using keywords and theirrespective weights. The weights indicate how important aparticular keyword is. During the categorisation process,an e-mail's keywords are matched to a particular categoryspecification. If a rnatch is found in the e-mail'skeywords, the weights of the category specification'skeywords are summed and averaged. If this averagedweight exceeds a predetermined threshold, the e-mail isput into that category. As such, it is possible for an e-mailto belong to more than one category (see Figure 8). Thesecategories can facilitate searching from the KM-Document Manager.4 Findings and DiscussionOverall. these are some observations:o The enhancements do help "enforce" knowledgemanagement in groupware in a proactive way,e.g. knowledge organisation is enforced via thesimple text mining feature in KM-DocumentManager, and knowledge sharing is enforced inKM-Mail via the forced distribution of replies(and ratings) to everyone on the group;o The enhancements try to adapt to specific tasksin the organisations, e.g. via customisable blogsin KM-Blog, and via group problem sharing andsolving in KM-Mail;o Groupware content for documents, blogs and e'mails is now more structured and complementedwith metadata or keywords.We believe these enhancements come at a price as theyinvolve new ways of doing things, e.g. having tocustomise the blog fields, rate e-mails, and includekeywords in documents and e-mails. The consequurcesof these added steps remain to be seen as the prototype iscurrently not available to users for testing. Resistance tochange is expected but it is believed that without theseenhancements, groupware would remain a generic andreactive suite of tools for data and informationmanagement rather than being customisable andproactive for knowledge management.248The emphasis of KM-Groupware is to make groupwaremore than just a suite of tools for communication andstorage. Groupware has to be enriched so that its toolsand content can be structured in such a manner tofacilitate decision making. KM-Groupware has managedto achieve this to a certain degree with the variousenhancements.5 ConclusionMany organisations still rely on off-the-shelfgroupware and as expected, they would need to contendwith the off-the-shelf groupwzue applications theycontain. It is hoped that KM-Groupware wouldeventually become as widely available as possible,perhaps enough to be labelled ..off-the-shelf,. However,the emphasis would still lie on the unique features of itscomponents or applications.The prototype KM-Groupware is still underdevelopment and various enhancements are still beingresearched on. The list ofapplications may be expandedto include collaborative tools such as those for coalitionformation [8] and planning, as well as to realise aknowledge management initiative in the healthcaredomain [9].Figure 7. Rating an e-mail replyWith the new generation of web applications becomingmore popular, such as those categorised as Web 2.0 13)applications, it is hoped that the groupware of the futurewould truly "manage" knowledge via elements ofinteractivity, connectivify, and personalisation.AcknowledgementsThe author would like to acknowledge and thank AlanKah Leong Ch'ng, Siang Khai Tan, Chee Kian Teoh, BeeHiew Teh, Kai Lee Lim and Chin Tzu Tan for their efforttowards the development of the KM-Groupwareprototype.Referencestl] S. Swoyer, "Groupware: The Comerstone ofKnowledge Managanent Software ReviewEvaluation", ENT, 23 February 2000, BoucherCommunications, 2000.I2l E. Tsui, "Technologies for Personal and peer-to-Peer (P2P) Knowledge Management-, CSC LeadingEdge Forum (LEF) Technology Grant Reporg 2002.t3l T. o'Reilly, "What is web 2.0", o'Reilly, 2005.<http ://www.oreillynet.co mlpub I al oreilly /tm/ news/2005 /09 /30/what-is-web-20.htnl> (23 January 2007).l$it8 df f,iS f']@d larroFigure 8. Categorising e-mails249t4l E. A'l'meur, G. Brassard and S. Paquet, "PersonalKnowledge Publishing: Fostering InterdisciplinaryCommunication",IEEE Intelligent Systems, Vol. 20, No.2,pp.46-53,2005.t5l D.G. Schwartz and D. Te'eni, "Tying Knowledgeto Action with kMail", IEEE Intelligent Systems, Vol. 15,No. 3, pp. 33-39, 2000.t6l S. Lichtenstein, "Knowledge Development andCreation in Email", Proceedings of the 37th HawaiiInternational Conference on System Sciences, Hawaii,u.s.A.,2004.l7l K.G. Lim and Y.-N. Cheah, "Sharing, Evaluatingand Organizing E-rnail: The KM-Mail ApproachTowards a Platform for Enterprise-wide KnowledgeManagement", Journal of Information Technologt inAsia,Yol.l, No. l, pp. 69-83, 2005.t8] R.E. Marmelstein, "Force Templates: A Blueprintfor Coalition Interaction within an Insphere", IEEEIntelligent Systems, Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 36-4L,2002't9l Y.-N. Cheah, Y.H. Chong and S. Manickam, "APlatform for Enterprise-Wide Healthcare KnowledgeManagement", Proceedings of the KnowledgeManagement International Conference and Exhibition2004 (KMICE 2004), Penang, Malaysia, 2004.250

Groupware: The Comerstone of Knowledge Managanent Software Review Evaluation&quot;,

Technologies for Personal and peer-toPeer (P2P) Knowledge Management-, CSC Leading Edge Forum (LEF) Technology Grant Reporg

What is web 2.0&quot;, o'Reilly,

www.oreillynet.co mlpub I al oreilly /tm/

Enhancing Groupware For Knowledge Management.

http://eprints.usm.my/9418/1/Enhancing_Groupware_for_Knowledge_Management.pdf

Enhancing Groupware For Knowledge Management.

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