Using email to facilitate wiki-based, coordinated collaborative authoring

Abstract

Dandelion is a wiki-based tool that supports coordinated, collaborative authoring. In this paper, we present an extended version of Dandelion, which provides an email interface for users to accomplish their tasks by email in a coordinated, collaborative authoring process. Specifically, Dandelion employs a semi-structured, template-based approach that allows users to use templates to specify their requests in email. These emailed requests can be interpreted by Dandelion and are then used to automatically drive the collaboration flow. As part of its actions, Dandelion automatically creates a wiki page and dynamically updates it to record co-authoring tasks and collate co-authored content. As a result, users can use their familiar tool (email) to accomplish their tasks in a co-authoring process, while leveraging a wiki for additional benefits (e.g., obtaining collaboration awareness and formatting the text). Our preliminary study with two groups of users shows the usefulness of both Dandelion email and wiki features and their impact on collaboration effectiveness. Copyright 2011 ACM.