GB2473463A - Apparatus for collaborative working - Google Patents

Abstract

A computer apparatus to support a collaborative working environment is described. A computer apparatus 50, as part of the computer network, stores an electronic document and is operable to render data defining an image of a workspace in a windowing graphical user interface. The rendered image data is offered for downloading to further computer apparatus 50. The first computer apparatus is operable to receive commands from further computer apparatus. The computer apparatus is responsive to a first command, received from the first or further apparatus, to cause the stored electronic document to be opened and thereby to cause image data corresponding to said electronic document to be included in the workspace. A third command from a further computer's keyboard, mouse or touchpad may edit the document. A collaborative workspace image may be periodically generated by comparing a preceding version of the image to determine a difference, using an XOR operation, and then sending the difference to a further computing apparatus.

Description

Collaborative Working on Computer Networks The invention relates to the operation of a computer network to enable collaborative working by multiple users on a shared set of resources such as applications and documents.

Collaborative Working Environment (CWE) is a term which refers to any computer implemented tool which enables users to work in a collaborative manner. It encompasses communications tools such as email, instant messaging, application sharing, video conferencing and the sharing of documents in a collaborative workspace.

This last facility is the subject of the present disclosure.

It is now common for work to be conducted within teams of people wherein the team members work physically remotely from each other. Geographical collocation is no longer considered a prerequisite to the good functioning of a team of co-workers. This is due, at least in part, to the development in recent years of tools, many being computer implemented, which enable the exchange of information between team members without the need for them to be located physically near each other.

As with many fields of technology, tools establishing a CWE are in current use, despite their shortcomings. In particular, existing technologies do not properly establish a common workspace in which all participants have shared access and a real collaborative user experience. Users naturally suffer the consequences of using such tools with such limitations, but are desirous of improvement.

One issue arising in current tools in the field of interest, is that it is not possible to offer full duplex control to both users in a dual use CWE. Extrapolating this problem for further users, true multi-way collaboration is precluded. The current approaches do not provide a single, common workspace across a network comprising a plurality of interconnected computers (such as PCs).

One example of a computer program which offers a system implementation promising to enable members of a team to work together, even if those team members work for different organisations, is Office Groove 2007 (hereinafter referred to as "Groove") which is produced by Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Washington, USA. This makes several assertions about capability which, in practice, are not borne out and conceal some significant operational difficulties.

Groove is claimed to enable a workspace to be created on an individual computer, which is then synchronised as a background task with other workspaces to enable collaborative working. However, the product is explicitly intended for offline as well as online working, and so cannot be considered to deliver a truly collaborative user experience. Despite claims to the contrary, an adequate implementation of Groove relies upon a high bandwidth connection, as copies of documents and application data are mirrored around a network, which means that large amounts of data need to be transferred between participating computers in the synchronisation process.

The fact that the product allows offline working inherently disallows a true collaborative experience as one user working offline on a document may make changes which are difficult or impossible to synchronise with other changes made by other users when that user returns to an online working condition. The Groove product can thus be considered as allowing computers to interact to provide a serial off-line collaboration experience, which can be generally unsatisfactory to users.

As seen in the promotional material produced by Microsoft concerning the Groove product, ownership of versions of a document are critical to successful use of the product. Without significant human intervention, and the agreement of participants to comply with certain rules as to who accesses and changes documents and in which order, version control can soon become chaotic. The end result of misuse of Groove would be no better than if a document in question had been reviewed and amended and then retransmitted by email to all participants.

Moreover, Groove is inherently non-scaleable. That is, problems concerning interaction with plural participants magnify with increase in the number of participants. Latency, lack of synchronous working on documents, and bandwidth issues rapidly become insurmountable problems with increase in number of users.

An aspect of the invention provides a computer apparatus operable to be connected to further computer apparatus, the computer apparatus storing an electronic document and operable to render data defining an image of a workspace in a windowing graphical user interface, and to offer said rendered image data for downloading to further computer apparatus, said computer apparatus being operable to receive commands from further computer apparatus, being responsive to a first command to cause said stored electronic document to be opened and thereby to cause image data corresponding to said electronic document to be included in said workspace.

The computer apparatus may be responsive to a first command whether received on the basis of user input action from a user of said apparatus, or received from another computer apparatus with which said apparatus is connected in use.

The computer apparatus may be responsive to a second command to designate a stored document as being in a state selected from a set of states comprising shared or unshared, wherein in the shared state a document is to be available for application of the first command and in the unshared state the document is unavailable.

The computer apparatus may be responsive to a third command, receivable from another computer with which the computer apparatus is connected in use, to modify the electronic document included in said workspace.

The third command may comprise information defining editorial changes to be made to a document. The third command may comprise one or more items of data, the or each data item defining a user input action made by a user. The or each data item may define a user input action comprising a keystroke on a keyboard, or an input action on a pointing device such as a mouse or touchpad.

The computer apparatus may be operable to implement, with a computer with which said computer apparatus is connected in use, an instant messaging communications channel.

The computer apparatus may be operable to offer said rendered image data in the form of a bitmap. The computer apparatus may be operable to generate said rendered image data periodically. The computer apparatus may be operable to encode rendered image data on the basis of comparison with an earlier version of said rendered image data.

The computer apparatus may be operable to determine a difference between a version of said rendered image data and an immediately preceding version and, if a difference is determined, to offer said difference for download to a cooperating computer apparatus.

The computer apparatus may be operable to determine said difference by performing a bitwise logical XOR operation on said versions of said rendered image data. The computer apparatus may be operable to apply a compression algorithm to said difference before offering said difference for download.

Further aspects, advantages, and features of examples of the present invention will become apparent from the following description of a specific embodiment thereof, as illustrated in the accompanying drawings in which: Figure 1 shows a schematic diagram of a computer network configured to provide a collaborative working environment (CWE) in accordance with the specific embodiment of the invention; Figure 2 shows a side elevation of a CWE workstation of the computer network illustrated in figure 1; Figure 3 shows a schematic diagram of a display surface of the workstation illustrated in figure 2, displaying a CWE desktop in accordance with the specific embodiment; Figure 4 shows a flow diagram of a process for generating a CWE desktop at a CWE server and distributing that CWE desktop to connected parties; Figure 5 illustrates operation at a CWE server in response to a request from a connected party for a page update to a document displayed in the CWE desktop in use; and Figure 6 illustrates operation at a CWE server in response to a signal from a connected party corresponding to a user input action.

Figure 1 illustrates a network 10 in a specific embodiment of the invention. This specific embodiment of the invention is intended to demonstrate, schematically, the capability of such an embodiment to provide conferencing facilities to enable two parties (users) to interact by way of collaboration on shared electronic documents.

Although it may be possible in some cases for the process of establishing conferencing connection between two such parties to be technically complex, this process is well established in the art and the present invention is not concerned with improvements in

that field.

The network 10 is implemented making use of the existing infrastructure of the internet which is indicated in the diagram. Use of local networking instead of the internet 20 would be possible in local implementations of the invention; however, the specific embodiment is so configured to demonstrate the breadth of application of the invention.

A CWE server 30 is central to the operation of the specific embodiment. The CWE server 30 is operable to establish, when requested, conferencing communication between two user devices. To do this, the CWE server 30 makes use of information identifying users registered to the network 10 and which are capable of establishing conferencing communications.

The CWE server 30 further manages the continuation and termination of conferencing communications. As such, the CWE server 30 senses when a party to an established conferencing communication is no longer present, and reacts by terminating the communication if this is the penultimate party to the communication (i.e. only one party remains) or, in other cases, merely de-allocates computer network processing resource reserved for the departing party.

Two user subnetworks 50 are illustrated. Each of these accesses the internet by means of a router 52. A typical user subnetwork will include a CWE master 54 and a plurality of CWE slave computers 56. The presence of a plurality of computers in a sub-network may be necessary in view of the particular processing requirements imposed by multimedia communication in a conferencing environment. In this particular case, two visual display units 58, 60 are provided, of which the first 58 presents video conferencing facilities and the second 60 provides shared document viewing facilities.

An electrostatic work pad 62 is provided which is operated by means of a stylus 66 (as illustrated in figure 2).

A further advantage of using more than one computer to manage the above described input suite is that debugging of the various driver software products provided to enable implementation will be more straightforward than if a single combined input package were to be driven on a single computer. However, if a single computer can be provided with such capabilities, there is no obstacle in the present embodiment to such an implementation.

Communication between the CWE master and slaves is established by means of internet connection, the CWE master 54 providing principal communication with the CWE server 30. The CWE master 54 thus ensures that, as viewed from the CWE server 30, the user subnetwork has a single processing presence. If the CWE slaves 56 were to have, for instance, their own IP addresses, the conferencing communication might become unduly unwieldy and this could also reduce the effectiveness of the network.

The internet connection establishes any number of links with the slaves by means of TCP sockets on the established Local Area Network (LAN) to enable exchange of data between the CWE master 54 and the CWE slaves 56.

In this illustrated embodiment, the CWE master 54 executes software for the collaborative work environment, such as for the management of electronic documents shared with other users with which conferencing communication is established, and the stylus operated work pad 62. The first illustrated CWE slave 56 manages video conferencing, and thus displays video conferencing images at VDU 1 (58) and associated audio, and receives respective signals from a camera and microphone (not shown). The second CWE slave 56 is provided for logging communications sessions, such as for recording activity for traceability purposes or to enable charges to be levied to users for certain activities.

The workstation thus mentioned is illustrated further in figure 2.

The CWE workstation as illustrated in Figure 2 comprises a sub-network 50 as previously illustrated, including a CWE master 54 and slave computer 56 which are shown in Figure 2 as a combined computer unit. These can be in the form of a stack of computers.

The first VDU 58 is shown as a conventional unit, such as a flat screen monitor. The second display unit 60 comprises a projector which projects an image onto an electrostatic work pad 62 which defines a large drawing board style surface suitable for the formation of an image thereon or viewing by a user. The projector 60 projects an image onto the surface of the work pad 62. A stylus 66 can be used in cooperation with the projected image on the work pad 62. The stylus 66 needs no electronic means in order to cooperate with the work pad 62. In use, the work pad 62 detects electrostatically the use of the stylus on the work pad surface, and sends back signals relating to the position of the stylus.

Calibration of the work pad, with regard to the relative position of a projected image and the stylus position sensing capability of the work pad 62 may be required. This is

commonplace to the field of the invention.

It will be appreciated that an alternative embodiment could employ a liquid crystal display (or OLED or other technology) with a touch sensitive layer to enable user interaction. This would obviate the need for a projector such as that 60 illustrated in figure 2.

A camera 64, detecting a view of the user of the workstation 50 feeds back a signal to the computing devices 54, 56. In a practical embodiment, the camera 64 is combined with a microphone in order to allow a video conferencing stream to be established.

In use, the intention is for a serving device storing a document, to be able to distribute an image of that document to participating users of a CWE. These users can be participating users of a CWE. These participating users can be known as "connected parties" for the benefit of the following description.

In Figure 3, an intended image, as projected by the projector 60 onto the work pad 62, is illustrated. The image 70 defines a desktop style interface, comprising a number of "windows" or icons which will be described in due course.

Firstly, a tile 72 represents a view of a document, such as can be opened by the Microsoft WordTM application. A portion of another tile 74 is also illustrated. An arrow pointer 76 is also illustrated, which reflects use of a pointing device 66. The reader will appreciate that, in an embodiment where several users are participating in use of a single workspace, an arrow pointer will be displayed per user using a pointer device.

A tile 72 is displayed because a computer hosting the corresponding document has allowed the tile 72 to be rendered into the shared workspace. This is done according to the process illustrated in figure 4.

In Figure 4 the process commences on receipt of a request for a document to be added to the CWE. The device storing that document then creates a print request and sends it to a dummy printer, which is a printer driver installed on the computer concerned to convert the document into a postscript file. This printer driver can be called up by any application which supports printing. For instance, in a Microsoft Windows environment, a right click of a pointing device (such as a mouse) when the pointing device icon is over a document icon, causes display of a menu which, in most cases, includes a print option. The illustrated process causes that print option to be selected, and for the dummy printer driver to be engaged. In step S4, the resultant postscript file is stored locally. Then, in step S6, the postscript file is converted to a series of bitmaps.

That is, each page of the postscript file (which would, in the context of a genuine printer driver, correspond to individual pages of the printed physical document) will be stored as a bitmap. The storage step takes place in step S8.

Then, on the basis of previously stored information, the "current" page is assembled into an image to be put forward as the desktop for connected parties. This page may be "page 1" of a multipage document or may be the last viewed page if the document has been viewed before. Different applications will have different ways of handling which page should be displayed first, and cooperation with this approach is straightforward.

In step Si 2, the resultant tiled image, which is itself a bitmap, will be compressed. This compression can be by means of any available compression algorithm; the open source ZLJB algorithm is particularly appropriate for these circumstances.

Finally, the compressed tiled image data is transmitted to connected parties.

This transmission takes place in the first instance of transmission. Once the tile has been generated, it is available for use in a shared workspace. For this purpose, as illustrated, the tile 72 includes a plurality of functional icons 78 in a frame aligned along the foot of the tile. Other ways of presenting options to a user will be appreciated by the reader.

Functions which could be offered to a user include the use of a "highlighter" function, to enable a coloured penstroke effect to be superimposed over text and drawings included on a tile. Further, a user might be offered the facility to handwrite, using the stylus, over the tile.

Moreover, functional icons may be presented for "page up" or "page down" which will cause a signal to be sent back to the computer hosting the document of which the tile is a representation, so that a further tile (representing the previous or next page, as the case may be) can be presented to all users of the CWE.

In one embodiment of the invention, such additions to a tile by a use would be generated locally of the user, arid stored on the local computer apparatus, such as in the CWE Master. An upload' button can then be provided, such as on a control panel window 80, to enable the data defining those penstrokes to be sent to all other users.

This enables penstrokes to be made, such that the user can then determine whether or not such notes as these penstrokes represent should be displayed at other user devices as well.

In another embodiment, exchange of information could be implemented more dynamically, with each participating workstation collecting user information concerning such functionality, and carrying out a consolidation and replication exercise between the computers to combine the penstroke data and display all penstrokes per computer.

Refreshing of the tile image takes place in accordance with the process illustrated in Figure 5. In Figure 5, the process commences with receipt of a request for update of the image. This may be in the form of a request for a page update. This might arise if a user input action consists of a sequence of commands corresponding to "next page" or "page down" or similar actions depending on the application.

In response to this, in step S20, the connected party storing the document concerned retrieves from its storage means the stored bitmap for the new page. Then, the computer determines, in step S22 if the bitmap has been transmitted to connected parties before. If it has, then, on the basis of an assumption made in accordance with the specific embodiment, that connected parties will have a copy of that page in local cache, a request will be sent in step S24, for local retrieval of the bitmap for the new page from that local cache. Then, the tiled image can be assembled by that connected party for display to a user. On the other hand, in step S26, if the bitmap has not been transmitted before, then the compressed bitmap for the new page is sent to connected parties.

A tile represents a single displayable page of a document, and is not an editable document in its own right. To make editorial changes to the content of a document, the document must be opened using an appropriate application. Popular document types include those used in conjunction with the Microsoft OfflceTM suite of products, but the invention is evidently not limited to such.

A user at a workstation will select for a tile to be "opened" using the native application, by performing a selection operation, either on a button 78 as illustrated or by "double tapping" (which will be a recognisable term to the user) in the field of the tile 72. The reader will understand that the term "native" application is intended to cover any computer program product suitable for opening the document of which the tile is a representative view. It is not necessary that the native application should be exactly the same product as that which generated the original document -most software developers' approach to version compatibility enables different versions of products, or indeed different products altogether, to open documents.

If a user workstation detects a user input action which indicates that a user wishes a document to be opened, then the workstation determines if the document in question is stored locally or at another workstation. In the former case, the operation is relatively simple -the document is retrieved on the operating system and opened using the corresponding native application. In the latter case, a message is sent to the hosting workstation for the document to be opened. If the user in question has been granted permission to open the document (this might have been determined at establishment of the CWE, or could be done dynamically, or by default) then the document is opened in the native application. The view of the document in the native application is then rendered into the workspace.

A user can then make editorial changes to the document, using a protocol enabling user input actions to be captured and transmitted to a remote location. An approach similar to that of VNC (which will be known to the reader) can be used. By such an approach, mouse and keyboard events can be captured and transmitted. These are then replayed at the PC hosting the shared application, which then updates the document. Display updates are then transmitted back to the other connected parties to ensure that the image at the shared application is synchronised at all connected parties.

After closing the shared application, the tile image may need to be refreshed, if changes have been made and saved to the respective storage location (e.g. hard disk). In this case, the operation illustrated in figure 4 is repeated.

It will be apparent to the reader that an advantage of this approach is that transmission of graphical data (which can place significant demands on a communications channel) is restricted to certain events. For instance, global sharing of an image of a document in its native application is not envisaged, and the tile image will only be shared with other participants once the use of the native application has been completed. In other words, only data sufficient to define the pages that are viewed needs to be transmitted, not the whole document.

In Figure 6, a process is illustrated for the handling of an input device event made by a user at the workstation 50 connected to a workstation or other means storing a document and computer program means in accordance with the specific embodiment.

Depending on the circumstances, a user input device event can comprise a pointing device event or a keyboard event, or indeed any other event. Voice control commands could be contemplated but are not described in detail herein. Firstly, the input device event concerned is received from the connected party and that event is interpreted locally and applied to the local desktop in step S30.

When the shared document is closed (step S3 1) and has been updated and saved, then (as in step S32) the desktop needs to be updated with the modified document. If no change to the desktop has arisen, then the process ends. On the other hand, if a shared tile has been modified, then that changed tile is reprinted in step S34, as before, to a postscript file and thereafter to a bitmap. In step S36, the changed tile is redistributed to connected parties, and cached tiles of the shared documents are discarded, as no longer being current. The process then ends.

The process illustrated in Figure 6 allows the redistribution of images to connected parties, in a circumstance whereby a connected party has made editorial changes to a document as a result of user input action. This is facilitated by the specific embodiment of the invention.

Accordingly, the specific embodiment as illustrated provides the advantages of other systems which establish direct collaborative access with a centrally stored document, for instance by mirroring the document at several locations, without the disadvantages of those systems which lead to insecurity and conflict. That is, the document remains owned and stored at a single location and has not been physically shared with connected parties. Only "printouts" of that document have been shared. Editorial changes can be made to the document by recognition of user input actions. Moreover, and perhaps more conveniently, annotation can be imprinted overlaying a document representation, as the pointing device can be used as a "pen" so that notes can be inserted over a document in discussion. Essentially, the representation of the document can be treated as an electronic representation of a piece of paper, with shared comments also represented overlaying that document.

Much of the benefit of the described facility arises from the fact that it does not restrict or constrain users unduly. Indeed, it provides such unrestricted use of a document that users may be obliged, in certain circumstances, to establish a meeting protocol to avoid conflicting changes to be made by a user to a document shared in the CWE desktop. No protocol is imposed by the present system, and so users are free to develop such a protocol themselves, which can be by way of the voice and image video conferencing facility established alongside the CWE desktop. By the nature of the data transfer required by the system, latency is less of a problem than for systems which actively mirror documents between different locations. The present embodiment of the invention minimises the transfer of data to a few bitmaps per minute. In such cases, it is therefore practical to implement such a system involving international video conferencing facilities with CWE extension.

Claims (14)

1. CLAIMS: 1. A computer apparatus operable to be connected to further computer apparatus, the computer apparatus storing an electronic document and operable to render data defining an image of a workspace in a windowing graphical user interface, and to offer said rendered image data for downloading to further computer apparatus, said computer apparatus being operable to receive commands from further computer apparatus, being responsive to a first command to cause said stored electronic document to be opened and thereby to cause image data corresponding to said electronic document to be included in said workspace.
2. 2. A computer apparatus in accordance with claim I responsive to a first command whether received on the basis of user input action from a user of said apparatus, or received from another computer apparatus with which said apparatus is connected in use.
3. 3. A computer apparatus in accordance with claim 2 responsive to a second command to designate a stored document as being in a state selected from a set of states comprising shared or unshared, wherein in the shared state a document is to be available for application of the first command and in the unshared state the document is unavailable.
4. 4. A computer apparatus in accordance with claim 3 responsive to a third command, receivable from another computer with which the computer apparatus is connected in use, to modify the electronic document included in said workspace.
5. 5. A computer apparatus in accordance with claim 4 wherein the third command comprises information defining editorial changes to be made to a document.
6. 6. A computer apparatus in accordance with claim 4 or claim 5 wherein the third command comprises one or more items of data, the or each data item defining a user input action made by a user.
7. 7. A computer apparatus in accordance with any one of claims 4 to 6 wherein the or each data item defines a user input action comprising a keystroke on a keyboard, or an input action on a pointing device such as a mouse or touchpad.
8. 8. A computer apparatus in accordance with any preceding claim and operable to implement, with a computer with which said computer apparatus is connected in use, an instant messaging communications channel.
9. 9. A computer apparatus in accordance with any preceding claim operable to offer said rendered image data in the form of a bitmap.
10. 10. A computer apparatus in accordance with any preceding claim operable to generate said rendered image data periodically.
11. 11. A computer apparatus in accordance with claim 10 operable to encode rendered image data on the basis of comparison with an earlier version of said rendered image data.
12. 12. A computer apparatus in accordance with claim 11 operable to determine a difference between a version of said rendered image data and an immediately preceding version and, if a difference is determined, to offer said difference for download to a cooperating computer apparatus.
13. 13. A computer apparatus in accordance with claim 12 operable to determine said difference by performing a bitwise logical XOR operation on said versions of said rendered image data.
14. 14. A computer apparatus in accordance with claim 13 operable to apply a compression algorithm to said difference before offering said difference for download.