Week 5: Web Office Tools

I love talking about collaborative software and tools for sharing files across multiple locations. I just don't have an opportunity to really spend time with the tools. A few months ago, I checked out some documents-to-go sites that promised to help people get organized. Backpack lends itself to intranet functions, offering shared user spaces and sharing of different file types. It seems robust, but doesn't integrate with shared network drives on site or provide substantial security for sensitive content. It seems to be challenging to adopt personal organization tools at a corporate level, where one-size-fits-most is bound to be a better investment of support and money and provide a potentially more satisfying return to more people.

My organization has implemented SharePoint (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007), which works great--for those who can figure out how to use it. The "My Sites" function could provide substantial support for personal organization, but it is tied to the whole set-up of the system, which isn't' yet tied to our intranet site here. There are some growing pains, but I'm eager to see how SharePoint can help us manage intranet-type content.

Back to file management and sharing... Google Docs does great with items native to Google Docs. However, even for presentations created in MS PowerPoint (2003), Google Docs loses some formatting and positioning. My attempts to work with a document while tracking changes or using bibliography management software were met with dismal results. Overall, Google Docs is good for quick exchange of non-critical documents. Google Docs doesn't meet my organization's needs for file sharing, but if I were employed at a much smaller non-profit organization, I would advocate for the use of Google Docs.

Questions for this week:

• Is this the future of all software products? What do you think? Collaboration is hot right now, and it makes more sense to post a link rather than send a whole document--most of the time. However, controls for collaboration for certain types of projects need to be mediated by local IT managers. I think all in-office software packages should provide a means for publishing documents to the web a-la Google Docs--without having to manage some server technology. Seamless is easy; setting access for users by non-IT personnel is priceless.
  

As part of the Optional Assignment for this week, I created a document in Google Docs and then posted it here.

To expand this presentation, click "Menu" above, then the link "SharePoint Portals for Collaboration" under the slide image. The expanded presentation will open in a new window. If you would like the speaker notes, click "print slides" in the lower right corner of the expanded presentation screen.