Chapter 8
Network Adress Translation
NAT (Network Address Translation) is the translation of an Internet Protocol address (IP address) used within one network to a different IP address known within another network. One network is designated the inside network and the other is the outside.
E-mail is a relatively common means of communicating. It has the fundamental advantage of being asynchronous, which means that the sender and receiver do not have to be connected at the same time. The recipient can pick up and reply to a message at any time. In a group context, e-mail is even more important because it is easy to send messages to the entire group. Moreover, the messages can be saved and organized so that they create a thread or history of a discussion. E-mail is also used to send documents as attachments.
Group Decision Support System
Group decision support system (GDSS) technology supports project collaboration through the enhancement of digital communication with various tools and resources. These types of programs are used to support customized projects requiring group work, input to a group and various types of meeting protocols.
Groupware
Groupware refers to programs that help people work together collectively while located remotely from each other. Programs that enable real time collaboration are called synchronous groupware. Groupware services can include the sharing of calendars, collective writing, e-mail handling, shared database access, electronic meetings with each person able to see and display information to others, and other activities.
Knowledge Management
Knowledge management is the name of a concept in which an enterprise consciously and comprehensively gathers, organizes, shares, and analyzes its knowledge in terms of resources, documents, and people skills While the system might contain rules, it is primarily a giant database of easily accessible data for experts. KM systems are designed to organize information and to assist people in collaborative projects and research. The system can be relatively unstructured and often consists of many individual cases. Decision makers can search the sys- tem for cases with features similar to their current issues. The cases are cross- referenced so that a decision maker might research one aspect of a case and find a related issue. The links make it easy to explore the related issues, tying together a variety of concepts and identifying related problems or consequences.
Telepresence
The term used to describe a set of technologies, such as high definition audio, video, and other interactive elements that enable people to feel or appear as if they were present in a location which they are not physically in.
Wiki Software
available for organizations to use for their own purposes from Medi- aWiki. Once you install the software, your employees can use Web browsers to create shared content. Drafts can be created and edited by multiple people. Links can be built between projects. Employees can return later to search for informa- tion. Effectively, the system can be used much as a giant bulletin board or Web site, but it is easier to create and edit text, images, and video.
Blog
consists of a site framework that enables others to read your comments
Sharepoint
document management
Version control
is a powerful tool both for teams and for individual documents because it automatically saves every revision.
Business Process Management
is the concept that some actions have to be performed in a sequence. In particular, documents need to be delivered to and reviewed by various people in sequence.
Information Rights Management
provides tools to limit the distribution of documents and control what people are allowed to do with each document. Ultimately, an important goal of teamwork systems is to collect all of the information used to make decisions and hold it as the organization's memory. This knowledge management system can then be used for future decisions and problem solving.