Contributions published at Software Evolution and Architecture Lab (Harald Gall)

The MObile Teamwork Infrastructure for Organizations Networking (MOTION) service platform that we have designed and implemented addresses an emerging requirement in the daily business of large, distributed enterprises: support for mobile teamwork. Employees are often on the move and use a wide range of computing devices such as WAP phones, PDAs, notebooks and desktop computers. The service architecture that we have developed supports mobile teamwork by providing multi-device service access, XML meta data for information sharing and locating, and the XML Query Language (XQL) for distributed searches and publish/subscribe. We present the solution that we adopted in our prototype, analyze the shortcomings of this approach and based on our evaluation experiences, list the requirements for a publish-subscribe middleware for collaborative mobile working.

One of the problems faced by large, global organizations and enterprises is to effectively enable their employees to collaborate across locations. People need collaborative work support while they are on the move and have to share business documents and know-how. Although much work has been done in the area of Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) to date, supporting mobility is only recently receiving attention. Hence, most of the existing approaches do not deal with emerging mobile teamwork requirements such as locating business documents and expertise through distributed searches, advanced subscription and notification, community building, and mobile information sharing and access. Furthermore, existing applications and approaches are usually difficult to customize to business-specific processes and requirements. The MObile Teamwork Infrastructure for Organizations Networking (MOTION)1 system addresses these requirements and provides a generic teamwork services Application Programming Interface (API), TWSAPI, that can be used to build organization-specific collaborative applications. In this paper, we give an overview of the MOTION TWSAPI and illustrate its usage in building an application that provides document review support.

Mobile teamwork has become an emerging requirement in the daily business of large enterprises. Employees collaborate across locations and need support while they are on the move. Business documents (artifacts) and expertise need to be shared independent of the actual location or connectivity (e.g., access through a mobile phone, laptop, Personal Digital Assistant, etc.) of employees. Although many collaboration tools and systems exist, most do not deal with new requirements such as locating artifacts and experts through distributed searches, advanced information subscription and notification, and mobile information sharing and access. The MOTION service architecture that we have developed supports mobile teamwork by taking into account the different connectivity modes of users, provides access support for various devices such as laptop computers and mobile phones, and uses XML meta-data and the XML Query Language (XQL) for distributed searches and subscriptions. In this paper, we describe the architecture and the components of our generic MOTION service platform for building collaborative applications. The MOTION Teamwork Services Components are currently being evaluated in two industry casestudies.

Recent years have shown a strong trend toward electronic information management in many fields. The use of office applications generated vast amounts of digital information and global multi-site organizations are increasingly faced with the need for advanced Information and Communication Technology (ICT) facilities for information management and distributed working. We address these requirements and problems in the MObile Teamwork Infrastructure for Organizations Networking (MOTION) 1 project and aim at creating a highly flexible, open and scalable ICT architecture for mobile teamwork support. In this paper, we discuss key concepts, design goals and requirements we have identified to build a component-based mobile teamwork ICT architecture for complex, multi-site, multi-process organizations. We give a brief overview of the MOTION architecture and technologies and introduce the evaluation criteria for the MOTION platform.

With the recent advances in mobile computing, distributed organizations are facing a growing need for advanced Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) that support mobile working. The ability to use information effectively anywhere and anytime has become a key business success factor: Although many Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) systems have been introduced to date, technologies and architectures that support the collaboration of nomadic workers on a wide range of mobile devices, notebooks and personal computers is still a challenge. The Mobile Teamwork Infrastructure for Organizations Networking (MOTION) project is aiming to design a highlyjexible, open and scalable ICT architecture for mobile collaboration. In this papeq we present the mobile collaboration requirements of two MOTION industry case studies, and highlight the advantages of a Web-based peer-to-peer architecture and for nomadic working.

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