Collaboration Workspace Mediator for Unified Application Access
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional collaboration technologies suffer from inefficiencies, including disorganization and lack of deep semantic unification among software applications, leading to errors and data duplication, as team members independently manage different applications without a unified mechanism for interrelating their content and access control.
Innovation Solution
A system that integrates independently executable software applications within a collaboration workspace using workspace metadata, allowing unified access and management of application content and privileges, while maintaining data within the applications themselves and using metadata for location and access control.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If team members use software applications independently without a unified mechanism, then application independence and flexibility are maintained, but collaboration efficiency and organization deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a workspace as an intermediary layer between independently executable applications and users. The workspace provides a unified interface that mediates access to multiple applications, enabling collaborative features without compromising application independence. Users interact with a single workspace that automatically manages connections to underlying applications.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments the collaboration system into independent applications that maintain their own functionality while being accessed through a unified workspace. Each application remains independently executable and can be replaced or modified without affecting others, while the workspace provides the collaborative glue that connects them.
2Adaptability or versatility
If application data is maintained separately from the collaboration system, then application flexibility and access control are preserved, but data duplication and loss occur
Solution Approach 1:
The workspace acts as an intermediary data management layer that coordinates access to application data without maintaining copies of the actual data. It manages user privileges, access rights, and data relationships while applications maintain their own data stores, eliminating data duplication while preserving flexibility.
3Ease of operation
If a wrapper shell is used to unify applications, then visual integration is achieved, but deep semantic unification and access control consistency are lost
Solution Approach 1:
The workspace provides universal access to multiple applications through a single interface, handling diverse access control requirements uniformly. It translates user roles and privileges across different applications, ensuring consistent access control while maintaining visual integration. The workspace universally manages permissions without requiring application-specific integration.
Data Source
AI summary
A system, method and apparatus provide collaborative access to an application by identifying an application from a set of independently operable applications to be accessible from a collaborative workspace. The system creates an application container within the application for storage of application data on behalf of users accessing the application from the collaborative workspace and creates a workspace container within the collaborative workspace that includes workspace metadata that identifies the application and that provides collaborative users access to the application from the collaborative workspace. The system provides collaborative access to the application on behalf of users in the collaborative workspace. The collaborative access allows users to access the workspace metadata to identify and gain access to the application and allows the users access to the application data maintained by the application within the application container.