Collaboration: March 2009 Archives

Trilogy Solutions, Inc, Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and provider of SharePoint architecture and consulting services, and AvePoint, a provider in the field of SharePoint management and protection software, announced their strategic North American Partnership. AvePoint’s DocAve Software Platform is a solution for SharePoint infrastructure management and protection. With a unified, browser-based user interface and a distributed architecture, DocAve offers a broad spectrum of independently deployable modules for backup & recovery, administration, replication, content management, compliance, archiving, and migration. In addition to providing SharePoint consulting services, Trilogy Solutions provides several tools and utilities for collaboration environments, and recently released DriveSight - a free tool to assist the SharePoint community in analyzing drives, folders and files which may be uploaded into, or indexed by, SharePoint. http://www.TrilogySolutions.com

IGLOO Software announced their new framework for building community solutions. This modular framework provides developers with a flexible set of tools for customizing and extending IGLOO online communities. IGLOO's new framework consists of four components for solution development: A Theme Manager to create and manage the layout, design and branding of the community; A Global Configuration Panel to toggle application settings "on" or "off"; A drag and drop Widget Manager to create and configure custom application widgets; A core set of API's for integrating with enterprise applications like ERP and CRM systems, as well as cloud-based applications and like Google widgets and Salesforce.com. The platform's widget-based architecture will allow developers to create custom content widgets sourced from almost any third party application. Eventually, organizations will be able to create a library of content widgets that can be dropped into any page within the online community. Initial support to view and interact with external content from within the community includes Salesforce widgets to allow a real time view into the sales pipeline and easy access to other sales and customer data, and a Facebook widget to securely connect with discussions happening outside of a community. http://www.igloosoftware.com/

Nordic River announced they have released a new version of TextFlow, their AIR-based document collaboration software. TextFlow can now store all documents and versions in a “Document home” on the TextFlow server. The new version also allows you to invite co-writers directly to TextFlow. New writers receive a secure link in an e-mail whenever you want to share a version. The secure link starts TextFlow directly in the browser without the need for them to install TextFlow or even create a TextFlow account. http://www.textflow.com

zAgile, Inc. announced the general availability of Wikidsmart, the first application to leverage zAgile's semantic web infrastructure. Wikidsmart's semantic wiki features for Atlassian's Confluence enterprise wiki, enable users to: enter content in a consistent and contextually organized fashion; generate pages of inferred wiki content; automate wiki page and link maintenance; and find information with context-sensitive navigation and search. The zAgile infrastructure provides a foundation for information integration with other applications in the enterprise. Content may be entered in a consistent fashion via semantically annotated forms. Annotation captures properties, behaviors, and relationships of content. Information may be retrieved by contextually navigating through topics or simple context-sensitive searches. Inferred content may be generated automatically with simple embedded queries. zAgile's infrastructure, driven by ontologies that describe the artifacts, relationships, and behaviors for a domain, enables rich integration with other systems based on semantic web standards. Extensible ontologies for the software engineering domain are included, and zAgile provides professional services for ontology development for other domains including CRM and ERP. Other ontologies from third party providers may be used as well. Connectors are currently available for Jira, Subversion, and Perforce, and others will be added by zAgile and its open source community. Wikidsmart is available for download and licensed under the open source AGPL v3. A hosted "sandbox" allows users to test-drive a sample Wikidsmart for Confluence via the web without installing products (and integration with Jira and Subversion will be hosted soon too). Annual technical support subscriptions for the open source product start at $US 1,200 for 25 users, and commercial license subscriptions with additional premium features are available. http://www.zagile.com/

PBwiki Inc. announced the launch of PBwiki Campus Edition, a new academic product that makes PBwiki's hosted collaboration suite affordable for schools with up to 1,000 students, faculty, and staff. With PBwiki Campus Edition, a school can roll out an unlimited number of PBwikis for its classes, clubs, and other student activities. Previously, schools had to purchase wikis individually. http://www.pbwiki.com/

JustSystems  announced XMetaL Reviewer 5.5, the latest version of the company’s collaborative XML document reviewing software. Reinforcing the central role of document review and collaboration in the overall authoring process, XMetaL Reviewer lets subject matter experts and others contribute content directly to the documents under review. The latest version of XMetaL Reviewer also gains usability, connectivity, integration, and administration enhancements. XMetaL Reviewer moves the document review process beyond a read-only exercise that prevents reviewers from suggesting detailed edits to the documents being reviewed. Now, reviewers can actively contribute new content and rewrite entire sections of a document. Using the addendum editor, XMetaL Reviewer users with no knowledge of XML can contribute structured content, insert images, and create lists, tables, and whole sections for consideration as document modifications. In addition to harnessing the expertise of document reviewers, XMetaL Reviewer offers users a consolidated view of all their suggested changes which are displayed to all reviewers in real time, as the changes are being made. An audit trail tracks all document changes, and an inline chat feature lets reviewers discuss content changes in real time. XMetaL Reviewer 5.5 is available today with prices starting at $15,000 for the server and five concurrent user licenses. Additional concurrent licenses are $2,500 for five users. http://www.justsystems.com

Systems Alliance Inc. announced it has earned Certified status in Microsoft’s Partner Program. In addition to becoming a Certified Partner, Systems Alliance earned a Microsoft Competency in Information Worker Solutions, with a specialization in Microsoft Portals and Enterprise Content Management for its work delivering solutions based on Microsoft Office SharePoint products and technologies. Systems Alliance can help clients optimize their use of Office SharePoint products and technologies through Microsoft’s SharePoint Deployment Planning Service (SDPS) program. The program is offered to clients as a Microsoft Software Assurance benefit. Depending on a client’s Software Assurance benefit level, Microsoft will cover the cost of a pre-defined one, three, five, 10 or 15 day deployment planning session provided by Systems Alliance consultants. Much of the demand for Systems Alliance’s SharePoint services has come from line-of-business decision makers who are looking for ways to improve information access, collaborative business processes and content management. http://www.systemsalliance.com