[Preface] Organization of This Book

Organization of This Book

The book divides into four parts. Section One is for everyone: you (the aforementioned toolsmith/architect), your bosses, and your users. They introduce two major document-sharing modes: Usenet-style discussion, and Web document databases. They explain how these modes embody groupware principles, why it's important to apply those principles, how that helps everyone manage information better, and how every user can further that lofty goal by making better use of existing standard Internet client software.

The remaining three sections are a geek-fest. Don't show them to your boss, or your users; as with law and sausages, they likely won't want to see groupware being made. These chapters sling Perl scripts right and left, wallow in primordial data structures, deploy Java servlets, run XML parsers, transform documents, automate processes, and explore nooks and crannies of Web-server, news-server, and search-engine configuration. Why? In my experience, these are the ways you get things done. Groupware toolkits - commercial ones like Notes and Exchange as well as the Internet alternatives I explore in this book - only scratche the surface of the problem. Ultimately you have to customize the stuff because teams and business processes need support that you can't stamp out with a cookie-cutter. You have to be willing to use every trick in the book - and a few that aren't.


	Practical Internet Groupware By Jon Udell 1st Edition October 1999 (est.) 1-56592-537-8, Order Number: 5378 384 pages (est.), $29.95 (est.)


Who Should Read this Book		Part One: Using Internet Groupware

Practical Internet Groupware

Organization of This Book