External Team Collection Sharing in Content Management
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current collaboration tools lack the ability to easily share content collections with teams from external entities, leading to inefficiencies and disruptions when team members leave, as they are designed to share content only with individuals or internal teams within the same organization.
Innovation Solution
A content management system that enables sharing of collections between teams from diverse entities, allowing administrators to manage team relationships and appearances, providing full collaborative benefits and maintaining project access even when team members change, by forming and managing teams and configuring them to appear as intended to external partners.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If content items are shared with individuals from external entities, then collaboration between entities is enabled, but team-level sharing and management is not supported
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates a virtual representation (copy) of the external team within the collaboration platform. Instead of sharing with individual members, the system creates a team entity that replicates the external team's structure and membership, allowing the sharing mechanism to treat external teams the same as internal teams while maintaining simplified individual sharing capabilities.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary layer (the external team entity) between the sharing user and the actual external team members. This intermediary allows the sharing mechanism to operate at the team level while the underlying system still manages individual user permissions and access, resolving the contradiction between simple sharing and team-level management.
2Productivity
If content collections are shared with external teams, then seamless collaboration is achieved, but system complexity increases to manage team relationships and appearances
Solution Approach 1:
The patent enables external teams to self-register and self-manage their team configurations. The system provides automated team discovery, validation, and setup, reducing the need for manual administrator intervention. External team members can join and manage their own team's appearance and settings, while the system automatically handles the complex relationship mappings.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent performs preliminary actions by automatically discovering and validating external teams before sharing occurs. The system pre-configures team entities, validates membership, and sets up appropriate permissions in advance, so that when sharing is initiated, the complex relationship management is already resolved and productivity is immediately enhanced.
3Reliability
If sharing is done at individual level, then team member changes cause disruptions, but team-level sharing is not supported
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges individual user accounts with team entities by creating a hierarchical relationship where team membership is the primary access mechanism. Instead of managing individual sharing permissions, the system combines all team members under a single team-level sharing relationship, ensuring that when members change, the team entity remains the stable access point and project continuity is maintained.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements dynamic permission inheritance where team members automatically inherit access rights from their team affiliation. When team members join or leave, the system dynamically updates permissions without requiring manual intervention, and the team entity itself remains a stable sharing target, ensuring reliable project access continuity while adapting to membership changes.
Data Source
AI summary
The disclosed technology provides for sharing of collections between teams from external entities. The present technology allows administrators of an entity to manage what teams from their entity can be exposed outside of the entity and to manage how their entity is viewed by external partners. Sharing between teams provides benefits of easier sharing whereby it is not necessary to share a collection individually with all users of a team. It also provides a more logical sharing paradigm where collaboration is otherwise thought of between two partner entities and not specific employees of those entities. Sharing between teams allows an administrator to manage the user accounts associated with the team so that as team members come and go, all current team members will have access to projects in which the team is involved. Additionally, established teams can be configured to enjoy the full collaborative benefits of the content management system.