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Office Automation And Group Collaboration

In the modern workplace communication between parties and information sharing have become more important than ever. Organizations move at a much faster pace than ever before and efficient communication is a must. Furthermore the tools that allow organizations to work, produce or communicate faster are becoming increasingly important. This types of tools fall under the category of office automation and the communication aspect falls under group collaboration.
Office automation is in its simplest form is any machinery and/or software that facilitates the manipulation or sharing of information that is needed for the day to day operations of the organization. Things like LAN (for information sharing and access), telephone switchboard, office software (word processing, email, presentation), adobe acrobat (for PDF files), among others, basically any machine or item that make the information sharing, management or manipulation easier for the organization can be considered part of the office automation process. On the other hand we have group collaboration this is normally some software that facilitates the communication between a group of people, mostly centered on a goal, project or a common interest that bring them together. This could be a shared email list, a shared activity/meeting calendar, access tom the same files (for example a shared hard drive between them where they all have access to a group of shared files). Another type of group collaboration can be websites where groups can meet and share information, for example Yahoo Groups, Excite Groups, MSN Groups, this websites offer memberships to a groups, where people with similar interests of goals can interact. They also provide some tools to facilitate this like message boards, mass group emailing and areas to share photos or files which all group members can access at their leisure.
The authors company uses many varied office automation software which allows for an easier form of workplace interaction and...