Collaboration Services Specification

MITRE

Dr. Mark T. MayburyExecutive Director

Information Technology Center

http://www.mitre.org/resources/centers

a

CI ISCENTER FOR INTEGRATED

INTELLIGENCE SYSTEMS

“Technical Solutions that Make a Difference”

Organization: G060Project: 03986078-AA

204/19/23 12:33

MITREG060

Evolution of Market Offerings

AsynchronousCollaborationSolutions

SynchronousCollaborationSolutions

Integrated CollaborationEnvironments

0 Document-centric, share information and ideas

0 Email

0 Bulletin boards / discussion databases

0 Information sharing tools / Intranets

0 Group calendaring

0 Meeting-centric, interactive and share in creation process

0 Supports formal and ad hoc collaborations

0 Text chatter

0 Shared whiteboards

0 Application sharing / screen sharing

0 LAN-based video and audio conferencing

0 Place-based, support all models of collaboration

- Synchronous and asynchronous

- People as core component

- Persistence

304/19/23 12:33

MITREG060

Example Participant View: MITRE’s Collaborative Virtual Workspace (CVW)

404/19/23 12:33

MITREG060

Collaboration Server Architecture (Services)

Co

nte

xt

Instru

me

nta

tion

Dire

cto

ry

Co

nfe

renc

ing

Pro

ces

s

Arc

hive

Se

curity

Do

cu

me

nt

Se

arch

To

ol

Users/Participants/Roles

Se

ma

ntic

Co

llab

Asymmetric Collaboration

Event Support

Interactive Multimodal Participants

504/19/23 12:33

MITREG060

Services View

Object Request Broker

Object Services

ApplicationObjects

Common FacilitiesC4ISRFinancial Medical

Collaboration Facilities

TaskManagement

User Interface

SystemsManagement

InformationManagement

Context Participant Conference

Vertical Markets

Horizontal Facilities

604/19/23 12:33

MITREG060

Context (1 of 2)

0 Contexts are the persistent, objective focal point for organizing and containing activities, people/agents, information/data, and applications.

0 They also provide the integration point for- Conferences- Instrumentation- Context-specific capabilities- Security

0 Foundation for collaboration metaphor- End-user experience metaphor?

704/19/23 12:33

MITREG060

Context (2 of 2)

0 Contexts maintain- A list of Participants- A ConferenceManager for conferences- A Folder of user-published objects

0 Contexts may relate to- Plan nodes (objectives)- Process- Organization (logistics cell)- Functional area- Individual users (private offices)- Reimplement room/building metaphor

0 Ability to join a context is regulated by Role-based access controls

804/19/23 12:33

MITREG060

Context Directory

0 Maintains the searchable directory of Contexts0 Creates locally-hosted Contexts0 Registers Contexts hosted elsewhere

904/19/23 12:33

MITREG060

Role

0 Participants present a set of Roles they are representing in a Context or Conference

0 Roles are both informational and used for access control0 A tree rooted at “all users” relates all roles0 Access control by name via personal roles0 Credentials are used to authenticate the proposed use of a

Role

all users

logistics

humanuser

admin

Smith

securityofficer

Doe

1004/19/23 12:33

MITREG060

Context

Context Participant

ContextMember

Conference

ContextDirectory

Credential

CollabRole

Folder

1104/19/23 12:33

MITREG060

Context Distribution

0 Design allows Contexts to be hosted on distinct physical machines- If a Context will primarily be used on a particular LAN,

it can be moved there- Reduce network bandwidth, improve latency- Still available to outside users- Suggested that centers of excellence may leave

contexts available during day-to-day use- Will be attempted in phase 2

0 Context Server design could be replicated- Not necessary for distributed demo- Will be investigated as time and priority permits

1204/19/23 12:33

MITREG060

What do Contexts and Roles do for me?

0 Contexts provide a workspace management tool- Switch between sets of tools, data and collaborators by

switching contexts- Facilitates discovery of people and useful information

for users working similar problems0 Roles control access to tools and data

- …but also provide cues to which visualizations are appropriate for a particular user’s task

0 Role will be related to eventual security architecture0 To be effective, Role and Context information must be

propagated throughout the JFACC system- User interface across the system needs this- Back-end tools may need Role/Credential information

to decide access

1304/19/23 12:33

MITREG060

Participant

0 Models a “user” of the system- Human user or software agent- Independent of location/connection

0 Contains information required to visually present the Participant (name, rank, email address)

0 Has a set of Roles known to be available0 Lists Contexts currently a member of

1404/19/23 12:33

MITREG060

Participant Directory

0 Searchable directory of Participants- By role- By name- By search language (soon)

0 Maintains availability information0 Delivers “pages” or “instant messages” to Participants

and Roles- Could easily fall back to email/pager/… for

disconnected Participants0 Is this the authoritative directory service for users in the

JFACC system?

1504/19/23 12:33

MITREG060

Participant

Participant

HumanParticipant

SoftwareParticipant

Credential

CollabRoleParticipantDirectory

1604/19/23 12:33

MITREG060

Conference

0 A Conference is a single-medium collaboration0 Provides

- A roster of Participants and their Roles in the Conference

- Media type and suggested application- Access control

0 A ConferenceManager organizes and manages Conferences inside of a Context

1704/19/23 12:33

MITREG060

Conference

Context

Participant ConferenceConferenceParticipant

SchemaConference

DataConference

McastConference

Credential

CollabRole

ConferenceManager

NodeController

...

1804/19/23 12:33

MITREG060

Conference design

0 Conference is designed as an interface0 JCS supports third-party integration of sessional

collaboration systems against the Conference API0 Conference objects may be hosted anywhere on the

network0 Network impact dependent on Conference implementation

- For example, chatter Conferences typically contain a message exploder collocated with the Conference object

- Audio/video conferences as MulticastConference communicate peer-to-peer

1904/19/23 12:33

MITREG060

Conference implementations

0 TextConference implements basic chat capabilities0 MulticastConference models multicast streaming media

conferences- vat (audio), nv (video), wb (whiteboard)- Allows heterogeneous clients for a media type

0 DataConference provides a simple generic event distribution mechanism with support for roster and late join- Suggested base for application developers- SDK includes Java-oriented API

2004/19/23 12:33

MITREG060

C2SchemaConference (under development)

0 Supports synchronous collaboration on C2Schema objects0 Users work on tentative “draft” objects to be eventually

relinked to plan0 Provides field-level change notification0 An additional application-specific channel allows

broadcast of view-specific events (scrolling around map, presentation change)

0 Current implementation uses CORBA DII0 FineC2 support in design phase

2104/19/23 12:33

MITREG060

Intelligent Multimodal Participants (IMPs)

2204/19/23 12:33

MITREG060

Collaboration Relationships

Context Context

Participant

Co

nf

Relationships

Co

nf

Co

nf

Co

nf

Ctx

Me

mb

er

Ctx

Me

mb

er

Ctx

Me

mb

er

Ctx

Me

mb

er