The out-of-the-box Novell Teaming tools alone provide powerful enhancements to online collaboration. In addition, when you use tools in combination and apply structure to content design, Novell Teaming becomes a powerful knowledge-management and enterprise-social-networking tool. Knowledge management involves the efficient development, management, access, and distribution of organizational knowledge. Enterprise social networking involves the efficient connection of knowledgeable people needed to form teams, make decisions, and complete work (think “MySpace.comTM for the workplace”).
Consider these examples:
When people use their personal workspaces to provide detailed information about themselves, the purpose of the workspace moves beyond merely contact data (phone numbers, e-mail addresses, Novell Conferencing username, and so on). It enables searches for various subject-matter experts. Also, Novell Teaming analyzes its search results, telling you which people discuss your search topic the most and in which places these conversations are happening. It is easy to see pockets of expertise associated with your area of interest.
Experts can rate entries in Novell Teaming by using a five-star rating system (one star indicating the least impressive, and five stars being the most impressive), providing an additional tool for determining the quality of information.
Novell Teaming provides tools, such as wikis (information coauthored by all participants), blogs (chronological journal entries allowing for comments from readers), workflow (an online representation of a business process), and tags (categorical labels applied to items), which people can use to create and organize information organically, over time, in ways that map best to the team’s natural work style. Using these tools, teams literally move their business processes online and automate their work.
Novell Teaming provides work-area summaries, called accessories, that provide a snapshot of a potentially large amount of information, highlighting the most relevant data. For example, the accessory can present entries submitted by an expert on a given subject matter, or it can summarize task-completion information by providing a milestones overview.