Review and functional classification of collaborative systems

E-collaboration and collaborative systems bring geographically dispersed teams together, supporting communication, coordination and cooperation. The paper presents a review of research in the area of creating collaborative application taxonomies. We analyze previous literature, and examine commercial products and research prototypes in the domain of collaborative computing. Our survey provides a list of basic collaboration services, and the tools are presented with regards to the services they provide. All surveyed tools are then classified to four categories of functional services. In conclusion, the paper highlights a number of areas for consideration and improvement that arise when studying collaborative applications. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.