Shared books: collaborative publication management for an office information system

A Shared Book helps the users of an office information system create a multiple-part publication and manage it throughout its life cycle. The Shared Book supports simultaneous collaboration both by allowing different workers to work on different parts at the same time and by ensuring that workers use the current revision of each part. It protects publication information by providing locking and access control. The Shared Book communicates the publication's current state to each worker through a What-You-See-Is-What-I-See (WYSIWIS) display. Early users report that the Shared Books application has improved their productivity by simplifying their file management and by helping them track the production status of their publications. Shared Books will be part of the next release of the Xerox ViewPoint document processing system. In this paper we present the results of our study of publication management needs and describe how Shared Books supports them. We also describe some interesting aspects of its user interface and implementation.