Collaboration Services Specification

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• Collaboration Services Specification

Dr. Mark T. MayburyExecutive DirectorInformatio
n Technology Centerhttp//www.mitre.org/resou
rces/centers
Organization G060 Project 03986078-AA
MITRE
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Evolution of Market Offerings

• Place-based, support all models of
  collaboration
• Synchronous and asynchronous
• People as core component
• Persistence

• Document-centric, share information and ideas
• Email
• Bulletin boards / discussion databases
• Information sharing tools / Intranets
• Group calendaring

• Meeting-centric, interactive and share in
  creation process
• Supports formal and ad hoc collaborations
• Text chatter
• Shared whiteboards
• Application sharing / screen sharing
• LAN-based video and audio conferencing

AsynchronousCollaboration Solutions
SynchronousCollaboration Solutions
Integrated CollaborationEnvironments
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Example Participant View MITREs Collaborative
Virtual Workspace (CVW)
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Collaboration Server Architecture (Services)
Tool
Search
Archive
Context
Process
Security
Directory
Document
Conferencing
Instrumentation
Semantic Collab
Users/Participants/Roles
Event Support
Asymmetric Collaboration
Interactive Multimodal Participants
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Services View
Vertical Markets
Common Facilities
C4ISR
Financial
Medical
ApplicationObjects
Collaboration Facilities
Context
Participant
Conference
Horizontal Facilities
TaskManagement
SystemsManagement
InformationManagement
User Interface
Object Request Broker
Object Services
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Context (1 of 2)

• Contexts are the persistent, objective focal
  point for organizing and containing activities,
  people/agents, information/data, and
  applications.
• They also provide the integration point for
• Conferences
• Instrumentation
• Context-specific capabilities
• Security
• Foundation for collaboration metaphor
• End-user experience metaphor?

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Context (2 of 2)

• Contexts maintain
• A list of Participants
• A ConferenceManager for conferences
• A Folder of user-published objects
• Contexts may relate to
• Plan nodes (objectives)
• Process
• Organization (logistics cell)
• Functional area
• Individual users (private offices)
• Reimplement room/building metaphor
• Ability to join a context is regulated by
  Role-based access controls

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Context Directory

• Maintains the searchable directory of Contexts
• Creates locally-hosted Contexts
• Registers Contexts hosted elsewhere

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Role

• Participants present a set of Roles they are
  representing in a Context or Conference
• Roles are both informational and used for access
  control
• A tree rooted at all users relates all roles
• Access control by name via personal roles
• Credentials are used to authenticate the proposed
  use of a Role

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Context
Context
Participant
Context Member
Folder
CollabRole
Conference
Credential
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Context Distribution

• Design allows Contexts to be hosted on distinct
  physical machines
• If a Context will primarily be used on a
  particular LAN, it can be moved there
• Reduce network bandwidth, improve latency
• Still available to outside users
• Suggested that centers of excellence may leave
  contexts available during day-to-day use
• Will be attempted in phase 2
• Context Server design could be replicated
• Not necessary for distributed demo
• Will be investigated as time and priority permits

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What do Contexts and Roles do for me?

• Contexts provide a workspace management tool
• Switch between sets of tools, data and
  collaborators by switching contexts
• Facilitates discovery of people and useful
  information for users working similar problems
• Roles control access to tools and data
• but also provide cues to which visualizations
  are appropriate for a particular users task
• Role will be related to eventual security
  architecture
• To be effective, Role and Context information
  must be propagated throughout the JFACC system
• User interface across the system needs this
• Back-end tools may need Role/Credential
  information to decide access

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Participant

• Models a user of the system
• Human user or software agent
• Independent of location/connection
• Contains information required to visually present
  the Participant (name, rank, email address)
• Has a set of Roles known to be available
• Lists Contexts currently a member of

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Participant Directory

• Searchable directory of Participants
• By role
• By name
• By search language (soon)
• Maintains availability information
• Delivers pages or instant messages to
  Participants and Roles
• Could easily fall back to email/pager/ for
  disconnected Participants
• Is this the authoritative directory service for
  users in the JFACC system?

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Participant
Participant
CollabRole
Credential
Human Participant
Software Participant
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Conference

• A Conference is a single-medium collaboration
• Provides
• A roster of Participants and their Roles in the
  Conference
• Media type and suggested application
• Access control
• A ConferenceManager organizes and manages
  Conferences inside of a Context

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Conference
Context
Conference Manager
Participant
Conference
Node Controller
Conference Participant
...
CollabRole
Credential
Schema Conference
Data Conference
Mcast Conference
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Conference design

• Conference is designed as an interface
• JCS supports third-party integration of sessional
  collaboration systems against the Conference API
• Conference objects may be hosted anywhere on the
  network
• Network impact dependent on Conference
  implementation
• For example, chatter Conferences typically
  contain a message exploder collocated with the
  Conference object
• Audio/video conferences as MulticastConference
  communicate peer-to-peer

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Conference implementations

• TextConference implements basic chat capabilities
• MulticastConference models multicast streaming
  media conferences
• vat (audio), nv (video), wb (whiteboard)
• Allows heterogeneous clients for a media type
• DataConference provides a simple generic event
  distribution mechanism with support for roster
  and late join
• Suggested base for application developers
• SDK includes Java-oriented API

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C2SchemaConference (under development)

• Supports synchronous collaboration on C2Schema
  objects
• Users work on tentative draft objects to be
  eventually relinked to plan
• Provides field-level change notification
• An additional application-specific channel allows
  broadcast of view-specific events (scrolling
  around map, presentation change)
• Current implementation uses CORBA DII
• FineC2 support in design phase

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Intelligent Multimodal Participants (IMPs)
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Collaboration Relationships
Context
Context
Relationships
Participant