eCollaboration tools selected by IST4Balt project Dr. Anatoly Soloviev (EDNES)

1. eCollaboration tools selected by IST4Balt project Dr. Anatoly Soloviev (EDNES)

2. eCollaboration tools selected by IST4Balt project Goals • develop community in the Baltic countries capable to operate efficiently in modern information society • develop methodology for selecting eCollaboration tools for their further demonstration and application within the IST4Balt project • basing on the methodology select 3-4 innovative IST developed or other eCollaboration tools applicable for EU-Baltic States team work or useful for information society development in the Baltic States in the field of the Strategic Objectives 2.3.2.6, 2.3.2.10, 2.3.2.3, 2.3.2.7, 2.3.2.9 and carefully evaluate the selection • demonstrate (on non-commercial basis) potential of the selected EU telematics products at the project conferences, workshops, Web-sites, training courses, News Journals, etc. • adapt, as pilot examples, selected eCollaboration tools for IST4Balt project management activities and everyday collaboration between the partners • prepare a report on the pilot implementation of eCollaboration tools in the Baltic States with focus on what kind of tools are really needed to be developed as far as their implementation in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are concerned

3. eCollaboration tools selected by IST4Balt project “eCollaboration tools selection methodology and preliminary evaluation” • Prepared in June 2005 by independent experts in collaboration with EDNES, INFOBALT and VITP • Contents include: • Types of tools • Tools for project management • Tools for team work • Tools for teleworking • Tools for presence awareness and/or collaborative browsing • Common criteria for tools • Information and knowledge interactive portal for IST4Balt project

4. eCollaboration tools selected by IST4Balt project

5. eCollaboration tools selected by IST4Balt project • Methodology was applied to 97 eCollaboration tools including tools proposed by the project reviewer (software for PM, KM, DM, Teamwork and Collaboration in real time) • Using the basic principles of the methodology nine tools were preliminarily selected: • BAL.PM (Balanced Project Management) • BSCW (Basic Support for Cooperative Work) • HyperOffice • Marratech • MWlive • Projectplace.com • Subversion • WorkSmart • Xerox DocuShare The special meeting of the IST4Balt Steering Committee devoted to the preliminary selection of eCollaboration tools was organized on 25 October 2005 on the occasion of the INFOBALT-IST4Balt 2005 Conference and the IST4Balt 2005 Workshop in Vilnius, Lithuania, on 24-25 October 2005. The IST4Balt project engineer, independent experts and project participants presented the proposed eCollaboration tools for evaluation by the IST4Balt Steering Committee. • The nine preliminarily selected tools were subjected to more detailed examination and assessment • The final selection of eCollaboration tools will be carried out by the IST4Balt Steering Committee in Tallinn, Estonia, on 9 December 2005 on the occasion of the IST Training Day

6. eCollaboration tools selected by IST4Balt project The corresponding results are represented in D4 “Report on adaptation of pilot tools for EU-Baltic States team work”. The report contents are: 1. Introduction 2. eCollaboration tools selection methodology (...) 3. Methodology application 3.1. Preliminarily selected tools overview 3.1.1. BAL.PM 3.1.2. BSCW 3.1.3. HyperOffice 3.1.4. Marratech 3.1.5. MWlive 3.1.6. Projectplace 3.1.7. Subversion 3.1.8. WorkSmart 3.1.9. Xerox DocuShare 3.2. Detailed assessment procedure description 3.2.1. Analysis and evaluation approach 3.2.2. Summarized information 3.2.3. Brief semi-structured information on tools 4. Practice of using eCollaboration tools 4.1. WorkSmart 4.2. MarratechFree 4.3 HyperOffice 4.4. Plone/Zope Annex 1. Complete list of eCollaboration tools

7. eCollaboration tools selected by IST4Balt project Detailed assessment of the nine tools: comparative table with the summarized features

8. eCollaboration tools selected by IST4Balt project Detailed assessment of the nine tools: general information on each tool in table format (BAL.PM, Projectplace, BSCW, …) …...

9. eCollaboration tools selected by IST4Balt project Conclusions (1/2): • Final selection of tools will be carried out by the IST4Balt Steering Committee • A unified single tool that provides all features for PM, team work, DM and communication does not exist • Therefore preliminarily we can suppose that the best solution is to use three types of tools: • one for project management • one for document management, collaborative work and communication • one for communication and collaboration in real time • The best tool of the first group (PM) is BAL.PM, which provides both task management, scheduling and all resources management • Subversion is the best tool of the second group (DM) • The tools of the third group (Communication in real time) are Marratech and MWlive. Marratech is more powerful as well as it has a lot of additional features • The tools of the fourth group (Integrated tools) are BSCW, HyperOffice, Worksmart and Xerox Docushare: • All these tools have almost the same list of features • Selection of the best tool depends on the weights of criteria or indicators • If the most important criterion is price then HyperOffice should be selected • If we are interested more in integration with some PM features we should select BSCW or WorkSmart • If we are interested in mobile access (one of the focuses of the IST4Balt project) we should select BSCW • If we are interested in developing application using simple database we should select WorkSmart

10. eCollaboration tools selected by IST4Balt project Conclusions (2/2): • Therefore the best solution is to analyze three tools from different groups: BAL.PM, Marratech and BSCW (if we do not consider additional criteria listed above as the most important) • If we do not need all project resources management (e.g. we need only tasks management) we could use BSCW for the PM (which provides task management feature). For other resources (costs, labor) management, tracking and reporting we should use some simple tools, e.g. Microsoft Excel and Word • If we do not need all the features of communication and collaboration in real time (provided by Marratech) we should use only e-mail (provided by BSCW and Microsoft Outlook) and free VoIP, e.g. Skype, for real time communication • Therefore the final solution depends on the list of features needed for the project implementation and management and weights of criteria

11. eCollaboration tools selected by IST4Balt project Practice of using eCollaboration tools (1/2): • Two selected eCollaboration tools (trial versions) were installed by EDNES (testing purposes / assistance in preparation of D4): • WorkSmart 21 day trial version • MarratechFree These tools were actively used between EDNES team, Lithuanian project partners and independent experts who helped in preparation of the selection methodology. • IST4Balt Lithuanian expert tried the HyperOffice Suite trial version • The Lithuanian IST4Balt national Web-sites represent the interactive information and knowledge Web-portal (open source KM tools – Plone and Zope)

12. eCollaboration tools selected by IST4Balt project Practice of using eCollaboration tools (2/2): http://tols1.worksmart.net/: process of collaborative revision of D4 http://ist4balt.hyperoffice.com/: “My Documents” http://hera.wdcb.ru:8000/: chatting and creating objects on the common Whiteboard http://ist4balt.lt/: Plone editor (Epoz)