SiteScape’s ambitious Web collaboration system

I’ve always been fascinated by Web-based collaboration systems. They offer a structured environment for group projects and promise ease of access, the simplest deployment possible and when hosted, minimal setup time and minimal management.

One in particular that I’m impressed with is WebWorkZone 7.0, published by SiteScape (see links below). The company summarizes the system as a “hosted, reliable and secure way to share, store, organize and reuse strategic information globally.” Not that a summary really does the product justice. WebWorkZone has a huge feature set, which includes:

* A portal view (called the Summary Page) into your WebWorkZone that overviews your favorite discussions and document forums showing new activity counts, today’s calendar entries, scheduled chats, and pending tasks as well as a list of who is online for Quick Messages (a built-in instant HTML chat service).

* Online “threaded” discussions.

* Document management including round-trip editing, automatic check out, check in and versioning.

* Multiple calendar levels (WebWorkZone-wide calendar, team calendar and personal calendar), including the ability to send and receive calendar entries to Microsoft Outlook.

* Assignment status tracking.

* A Web file system that emulates the Windows file system metaphor for the Web environment allowing you to store, access, organize, publish, manage, and share files and documents securely (this version also includes a new drag-and- drop multifile upload applet).

* Features to run surveys as well as tabulate user responses and display the results in bar charts.

* Bookmarks for frequently used documents, discussions and calendars.

* E-mail services.

* Integrated support for AltaVista-based searching of all workspaces, entries and attached documents.

* A Site Map that lists everything you have access to.

* Support for wireless devices.

* Section 508 and W3C WAI accessibility support.

* Add-on applications including Contact Manager, Sales Lead Manager, Human Resources, Help Desk, and Filtered Discussion forums. In September, SiteScape will release additional applications including Forum Program Management and Proposal Management.

Optional features include support for third-party portals (Citrix NFuse Elite Portal, Oracle’s E-Business Portal, Plumtree’s Corporate Portal and Viador’s E-Portal Suite); and support for engineering file types through TailorMade Software’s CADViewer Pro and RealityWave’s VizStream Platform.

That’s just the highlights as there’s even more to the system! This has to be the most ambitious platform in its market.

WebWorkZone is hosted at Rackspace, and the company makes a big play of its security and reliability goals.

WebWorkZone service is free for the first 30 days, after which you are billed in arrears based on the number of users at the end of each 30-day billing cycle. The rate is $250 per user, per month for up to 10 users after which volume discounts are available.