Introduction to Groupware
Groupware is a program which is designed to act for collective work as for people who like to work together with each other even while located at different locations. It helps to work in collaboration with many people so that they are able to access collectively at any work or program while located remotely. It is also referred to as a collaborative program or software.
Groupware software programs are divided into two categories of programs, as they are known as synchronous and asynchronous programs. Synchronous programs are called real-time groupware as it is divided upon the basis of the real-time collaboration of group members and asynchronous refers to not working together in real-time with each other.
In groupware software programs we can find and work on various applications like handling group e-meetings with many people as well as email transfers in collaboration with many persons at one time. Despite these features, it can also access the sharing of various databases and calendars as well. Users can do collective writings too with many people and they can watch and share every information with each other while located remotely in real-time.
Groupware Features
Basically, groupware is the management of a shared group of work and tasks; whether it’s in the discussion, e-mails, e- meets, or some kind of polls or editing work. It helps you to do collective work on all these fields of work with each other at a time. It can work as a content management system for users like in WordPress. It can make all the group details of chats, emails polls and all the shared work and tasks which is done by each and every single person while logging. So, in short, you can find all the work details if required after the group access and meetings. So it is a good work record holder of every collective work done under its system. It also has storage of several folders and files at a time so works as a central informative storage system for users. Many projects which share polls and reviews for any program can be processed by groupware. It also manages the approvals, editing of emails and group chats and proofreading of the data. Groupware system also works as a tool for group bookmarks and has the data of group users and their profiles too.
Groupware Suites
Groupware software has many examples but the first one that was designed was Lotus Notes which was designed by IBM website. It was the first and earliest groupware software which was used for work at that time and is used in today’s time too at many workplaces. After that one of the next major suits that were launched by Microsoft was Microsoft SharePoint which is also a major working and used groupware software that works as a full-featured intranet at various offices and big companies. Besides these two we have other groupware software that benefits the users with their basic features are Xero, WordPress, Salesforce etc. with one of the most popular suits that are G-Suite which is Google originated and a very trustable example of saving documents, files, folders, mails, group chats and many collective work data. It works for social collaboration as well as for freelancers and early start-up entrepreneurs and employers in sharing their work, files or having chats, emails and any social collaboration working remotely with each other but can connect them while working at their comfort place or office.