Description
This pattern shows how shared virtual workspace technologies provide formal, structured synchronous and asynchronous collaboration through, or instead of, formal face-to-face meetings by enabling a shared electronic workspace for developing documents or capturing asynchronous communications (e.g., forums, surveys, or application sharing) over the Internet.
Please view the Shared Virtual Workspace Pattern below:
Diagram
Benefits
- Extends participation in NIH activities to individuals who are not physically present
- Involves individuals who cannot travel
- Improves quality of life for those who participate in NIH activities
- Improves productivity and quality of work when individuals can be virtually convened in situations where physical meetings are impractical
- Provides richer functionality with shared virtual workspaces than can be provided through shared drives, shared email folders, or “bare portal services”
- Provides a cost-effective and flexible way to provide virtual face-to-face meetings across the Internet
- Reduces travel costs
- Improves quality of life and productivity for meeting participants who avoid travel time
- Allows participation by individuals who may not be available for travel
- Provides a more reliable and accessible history of how content evolved and how decisions were made through portal history files
Limitations
- Integration between products will need to be managed in order to streamline the user experience.
- This collaborative infrastructure may need to be centrally funded in order to be made more readily available across the entire NIH enterprise.
- Provision for training of participants before the actual meetings is critical to the success of using software, and hardware, that the meeting participants would only use on an infrequent basis.
Time Table
This architecture definition approved on:
January 25, 2006
The next review is scheduled in:
TBD
