A case for document management functions on the Web

The use of the Web to support organizational work within the Xerox Corp. is examined in order to better understand the technology's limitations. Like many companies, Xerox is rapidly expanding its internal Web. It has more than 200 servers and supports over 20,000 employees with Web browsers. This internal Web, as an environment for supporting organizational work, is falling short of expectations and hopes in significant ways. A sampling of Xerox's successful and less-than-successful Web applications are examined. Systems integration issues related to group and organizational work are discussed. For successful applications, there was a match between the affordances of the electronic medium and the applications' needs. There were also relatively simple, well-understood processes involved. The less-than-successful applications were complex and had data and work processes that were not well understood.