Office Collaboration

Group Collaboration

Individuals in the business environment often do not work alone, but rather in teams, committees, departments, and other types of workgroups. To collaborate on common tasks, these members of an organization can have meetings, talk on the telephone, share documents, send faxes, and distribute memos. Many of these tasks are done through office automation software, a local area network, and group collaboration. Some of the software we use is electronic mail, electronic fax, video teleconferencing, and instant messaging.

Danuta McCall, a spokesperson for facilitate.com, explains that location for project teams is no longer a barrier. She says that collaboration software allows for a quick capture of risks, issues, and information. She further states that group collaboration software flattens politics and negative group dynamics, (Varughese, 2006). Since my organization is based on group collaboration, automate of communication in my office, off-site location, and clients are important. We, as a company, rely on many office automation tools.

A Polycom VSX 7000 camera used for videoconferenci...

English: System diagram: How vzRoom users communic...

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An automation tool makes group collaboration possible, but the most widely used application is also the standards in business today.

One of the major collaboration software that is used in the office is the electronic mail system. E-mail allows all personnel, in my organization, to communicate with internal personnel as well as external. Furthermore, e-mail can be used to communicate with customers and clients. Our electronic mail system uses an e-mail client such as Microsoft Outlook. Outlook communicates to the Microsoft Exchange server which allows delivery to the correct address. The exchange server also houses the global address book for all users on the system as well as client addresses. This address book is accessible to all users. Besides e-mail, Outlook has a few other features that automate a variety of tasks such as calendars, tasks, and journals.

With the calendar...