What is O3Spaces about?

Think of this common collaborative way in which a document is built:

You email a group of people with the latest version as an attachment, asking for comments. People suggest modifications. Some people will work on a section for a while, and want no-one else to work on it while they are fixing up that section (”locking”). This does not scale well, because email doesn’t work well as a repository for document versions (no automatic locking/conflict resolution mechanism), and the people in the group don’t have an easy, common and consistent way to refer to a relevant communication.

So one solution to improving the efficiency of this process is O3spaces.

O3spaces is intended to build and handle documents collaboratively in an online “workspace”. It is tightly integrated with openoffice and MS Office, and uses instant messaging; workspace member selection; access control lists; and file version tracking.

Licensing and costs

It uses a proprietary license for all versions.

Versions are:

Community edition (for up to 10 users): free, unlimited time (but “not intended for production use” (due partly to not using a real database).

In theory: could run several instances of O3Spaces server on xen or vmware or qemu, 10 users per team. Which should be ok for most Srijan purposes.

One possible problem is that people moving between teams may disrupt historical continuity as we run into the user limit. It doesn’t seem likely though for quite a while.

Professional Edition (5-100 users): 59 Euro per user. Extended subscription (one year per user 29 Euro)

Software as a service (SAAS) (”hosted service”): price on asking.

How is it organized?

O3spaces has 3 components:

1. a webserver part running on top of tomcat. The java GUI environment inside the browser allows you to create a team of people to handle documents. You can create a workspace layout for them and interact with these people. The document is the central focus of the workspace.

2. There is also a workspace assistant, which is a java application for the desktop which allows you to access the workspace from openoffice or MS office.

3. The third component is O3Spaces studio. This allows you to design templates for workspaces; do user administration; create staff units from which teams can be drawn; and define roles and permissions.

How is it used?

O3spaces is cross platform across the mac, linux and MS windows systems.

Typically, a user will be invited by another user to join a workspace to collaborate on a document. The user will click to the workspace, have a look around at the discussions that have been going on in the discussions section, have a look at the latest version of the document, and do his bit to reach the goal.

The workspace assistant, if set to active, will notify the user of changes in the workspace. So constant browser monitoring is not needed.

Hierarchical permissions allow sub-pages and sub-folders to be made in the initial workspace that restrict access for particular users in the team.

task example:

Suppose we have a project where we want to write up how to use o3space.

• One person leads it, lays out the plan (calendar), the workspace (text box, discussion threads, announcements, files).
• He invites, say:
  • One person to flesh out the details invited by the lead and fill up his notes.
  • One person to do the proofreading invited by the lead and fill up any more notes.
• When the team is assembled, the process is:
  • Write a planned timing in the calendar up.
  • Write messages.
  • Discuss.
  • Build the documents using the application’s automated locking/resolution methods to help you keep track of document changes.
• Update the calendar as you progress.

Along the way, you can build a subdirectory in which sub-projects or other less-related material is kept. Also, more sensitive material can be kept and hierarchical permissions set up to prevent viewing by one of the team.

Videos:

These videos give a quick idea of how you do things.

Workspace Members.swf : about inviting members to the team
Office document handling.swf : about altering a document

(I think they are intended to be viewed after registration so I am not giving the URLs for these)

Thoughts and Impressions after use

Slick but with some rough edges (eg: ubuntu gutsy openoffice2.3 had a problem with the mouse not working inside a workplace assistant navigation dialog, and I had to use keystrokes (tab, space, enter) to get around it). No manual required to do some tasks (eg calendar plan for a chosen project). There is enough documentation available covering the rest so that you should never be lost after you register.

People traditionally use a wiki (with an issue tracker) for document collaboration. So what’s the difference between that and and O3Spaces ?

O3spaces is centered about the document. A wiki is centered about the collaborative web text.

So in o3space, your remarks are associated with the document being processed, and all processes revolve around the document. Not only that, the document is saved with a point-and-click from within oowriter (or MS word) into the O3Spaces workspace with Workplace assistant. The document itself is not directly rendered in the browser (it is just a clickable link or icon). It may not be very cross platform (word compatibility issues) but it is usually OK if you use the same office software throughout (ie MS office exclusively on all machines, or (exclusively) openoffice on all platforms.

On the other hand, when a document is handled in a wiki, the wiki text is like a glorified “cover note” and each document version is uploaded like any other file attachment into the wiki. Remarks are associated with the “cover note” part, and everything revolves around this cover note part. Collaboration is done on the “cover note” part rather than any documents. The document upload is done from the wiki page (rather than oowriter etc). The cover note itself is rendered by the browser (though the document is just a clickable link or icon). The wiki is of course cross platform too (being browser based).

So, O3Spaces is useful if regular documentation changes are our thing, and we aren’t bothered about material being immediately visible on browsing (ie, the material is not an html rendition, but a document which needs to be clicked on to show up in openoffice or MS Word)

The extra features of O3Spaces that are not normally part of a wiki are the messaging options. However, issue trackers are a more sophisticated and structured way of clearing up issues than the current O3Spaces messaging system.

Alternatives

1. The old fashioned way: email updated versions to each other. (problem: doesn’t scale well).
2. The wiki attachment way: revise and put the document on a wiki as an attachment (with issue tracking). (Better than (1)).
3. The wiki way: create the document originally as wiki text. (the current practice in most outfits. Most mature wiki’s have the ability to convert from wiki text to oowriter).
4. Wait a year until O3spaces matures (marginally better than 3)
5. Investigate Central Desktop (30 day trial version available at http://www.centraldesktop.com/signup) (initial look suggests it isn’t much more than a managed wiki and tracking. The promise of O3Spaces seems marginally better).

Conclusion

For Srijan, I don’t think O3Spaces is currently significantly better than a robust and mature wiki like moin together with an issue tracker. That is, I don’t see significant need for using O3spaces in openoffice/MS Office document building, because the only extra it brings is the tighter integration. It still has some other rough edges, but I expect it will be better after about a year of further development.

There is also the separate and fundamental issue that the integration is based on openoffice/MS-word document-centric focus. A web-centric solution is better if you are not going to be doing documents much of the time, plus you can always print from web to document format anyway (the converse, getting from document to web format with O3Spaces is also possible, but then you need a separate location for where to put the web formatted version if you want to view it right away (which is presumably the purpose of the conversion)).

The need for O3Spaces for Srijan also seems insignificant because the amount of time spent on the document change is usually much greater than the amount of time spent on uploading the change. So when you compare an upload to a wiki with an upload with workplace assistant (direct from openoffice/MS office) the significant difference in slickness and the time saved doesn’t make a significant difference overall.

Finally, the lack of competition for O3Spaces means that it is unlikely to evolve in strength and speed the way wikis are evolving. (I do expect O3Spaces to do well – there are organizations, especially large ones, that will want a non-wiki document builder system like this. I am skeptical about how much better that really is).

So I recommend we use unfuddle with a wiki for now for document building. O3spaces may become more compelling later on, when it integrates the following (as is planned):
1: email so links to files and spaces can be done slickly
2: workflows (ie have a process that the workspace will follow).

We are going to be trying it out some time for a small document-centric project with contributions from many people in a team. This will be an optimal way to see how it suits Srijan.

PJ