With MyGADs Enterprise Edition, stakeholders can work together on a Wiki and search for stored information using direct answers technology, allowing members to ask, for example, what is Mark’s mobile phone number?, and MyGADs will search the information and return the actual number, rather than a list of links.
A ‘GAD’ consists of a shared workspace made up of a number of web pages, documents, and applications. This information can be accessed and updated by members of the group using an internet browser or mobile device. It is possible for the information to be deemed private, or opened up for collaboration purposes. There is no need to have an understanding of HTML or other complicated programming languages as a word processor can be used to create and edit the web pages, as well as add documents, images, and videos.
The sending of document attachments back and forth using email is not a very efficient method of collaboration. The MyGADs solution holds information in one centralized location available to the entire group. Version control keeps track of the changes and, if required, previous versions can be compared. Members of the group can add and amend the Wiki, as well as search the information, using BlackBerrys, or J2ME- and Windows-enabled devices, along with the majority of SMS-featured mobile phones.
A key feature of MyGADs is the direct answers search engine, which provides specific answers to queries, instead of a list of documents or links. The majority of search engines retrieve documents that match a keyword query, and present these linked HTML documents to the searcher in ranked order. However, most end users, especially those using a mobile device, are not looking for documents; they want precise answers to the question. In addition to processing information stored in a ‘GAD’, MyGADs connectors, utilizing web services or application programming interfaces (APIs), can search other external data sources and corporate information systems.
Synchronous collaboration, such as real-time online meetings and conferences, is valuable for direct-to-the-customer interactions for sales, service, and training. However, there are no hard and fast rules on which collaboration type should be used and when, and a combination of the two needs to be available to provide effective collaboration.
Source: OpinionWire by Butler Group (www.butlergroup.com)
