TellTable: Collaborative Work Using Single User Applications

Abstract

Many work environments require collaborative writing and editing of documents in diverse formats. In simple cases, there is essentially one author who receives approvals and comments from others. In other cases, the document is genuinely collaboratively authored using asynchronous or synchronous methods. A common way to collaboratively edit a document is to exchange draft versions between authors via email. This method introduces the possibility of conflicting changes and missed contributions as well as a significant burden as all members of the team are responsible for version control. The principle difficulty is that independent changes can be made to different versions, which must later be reconciled manually. It is also difficult to determine when and why a change was made. This article introduces TellTable, an open source system designed to allow single-user software applications to be managed in a collaborative manner. We will discuss current collaboration models, the technical aspects of the TellTable software framework, security issues in its implementation, and tests of performance.