Web-based Collaborative App 

In these days of large projects with multiple teams much design, and documents, Lotus QuickPlace help you to manage and store all this information. This is a Web-based tool that can be installed on your Intranet. The installation itself is simple. It integrates well with any existing Web server, though the preference is for Lotus Notes or Domino. But, even if you don’t, it’s not a problem. IIS on Windows seems to work fine.

Once installed, you can browse over to the Quickplace virtual directory on your web server by pointing to http://Quickplace. You will need to login using the admin username and password you used while installing QuickPlace. Once that’s done, you can configure different aspects of the collaboration tool from within the browser.

The administrator can add users that are allowed to create “QuickPlaces” themselves. Each QuickPlace could represent a new project, a new team or whatever collaborative unit you desire. Once created, the person who created the quickplace, (that is, the owner or the administrator) can add other users to this place. 

QuickPlace can also be customized greatly by either the administrator or the owner. This includes the layout of

QuickPlace, the colors and schemes used, the features available and many other options. You can even turn off ActiveX and Java Applet usage in case your company has a policy against using either or both of them. However, this does mean reduced functionality in a lot of cases. Case in point, the online, real-time chat between members of your QuickPlace is fully dependent upon a set of Java Applets.

So what are the features in QuickPlace for members? There is a common team or workplace calendar to which appointments or deadlines can be added. Team members can share documents or diagrams with each other and can maintain different versions of the same in the Quickplace. If members are logged in at the same time, they can even do real time online chat as mentioned before.

The team leader or QuickPlace Owner can publish newsletters that are sent to all the members of that Quickplace. Old news archives can be viewed by logging in and going to the news section.

No collaborative tool would be complete without a place where all members could discuss and post messages that can be viewed and replied to by other members of the team. QuickPlace offers this functionality and works just as you’d expect it to.

The Bottom Line: Overall, the product is easy to install and offers all the features you’d look for in an online collaborative tool. There is no restriction in the number of QuickPlaces that can be created. This is indeed a useful tool if you’re a big

company, managing a large number of people and projects. 

Vinod Unny is a Technology Consultantat Enterprise InfoTech