Agents in Groupware Systems.
Jacques Wainer, Clarence A. Ellis · 1998
This paper describes four classes of groups and discusses groupware tools for these classes. It concentrates on a particular set of groupware functionalities, agents, and their application to a particular class of groups, amorphous groups, of which the Internet is the clearer example. Keywords: groupware model, agents, Internet. 1 Introduction [EW94] proposes a model of groupware in which the central functionalities of a groupware system are classified into three different groups, or aspects. The keeper aspect groups functionalities related to the operations on shared data. The coordinator aspect groups the functionalities related to the temporal sequencing of activities (performed by the groupware users). And the communicator aspect groups the functionalities that allow unrestricted communication among the groupware users. Some groupware systems tend to provide functionalities that, in their majority, belong to only one of these aspects. Thus, a synchronous editor such as GROVE...