SICO

The SISU Collaboration Server (SICO Server) is a World Wide Web (WWW) based service for workgroup collaboration. It is implemented using standard WWW software integrated with the Oracle relational database and is now beta tested at SISU. The SICO Server is briefly described below, for further information please contact Ulf Wingstedt, SISU.

For a work group, the SICO Server features a set of services described in the following sections.

Knowledge Base Management

The central part of the SICO Server is a common knowledge base enabling sharing of knowledge between work group partners. Each participant of the work group can easily include new information to the knowledge base by adding WWW links pointing to any document or service on the Internet. Especially, a work group participant may make a document available at his own WWW Server and then add a link pointing to the document to the SICO Server knowledge base.

To facilitate retrieval of information from the knowledge base, all entries in the knowledge base are classified according to a work group specific classifying scheme as well as annotated with a descriptive text. In addition, the content of the linked document is used for building an index for free text search.

Threaded Discussion List

The SICO Server features threaded discussion lists where any work group participant can start new discussion threads, post messages and reply to messages posted by others. All messages can be retrieved by free text search.

Change Notification

A participant can ask the SICO Server for notification of important events such as a new entry in the knowledge base with a specific classification or a response to a message in the threaded discussion list. The notification is delivered through standard Internet e-mail.

User Authentication

The SICO Server handles work group privacy by requiring authentication of the user that access the server.