ITinfo: Excuse Me, But Would You Please Help Me Type This Letter?

Multi-User Applications

Wordprocessing for workgroups

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Excuse Me, But Would You Please Help Me Type This Letter?

by Dave Murphy
ISSN 1535-3613

I've been waiting for this feature for 20 years. Ever since I started playing with my first PC, an IBM portable and tried to work with my housemates editing our resumes, I've been thinking about the improving office workflow. Microsoft's Office 10, the successor to its failed Office 2000, will make the first step in that direction: multi-user word processing.

Multi-user word processors have been around for a while -- they're not really well known, but I've been playing with a few during the 90's -- but a major software vendor hasn't released a 4-hand or 6-hand or 24-hand word processor before, and according to PC Data, Microsoft commands 96 percent of the software suite sales.

For tag-team document editing, multiple users can edit a file simultaneously, and changes are displayed in page margins as callouts (so they don't disturb the page layout). One user can compare all edits, then merge them into a final version. Some of these features are also present in other Office applications.

Office 10's workgroup web features let users quickly set up a slick site with message boards, scheduling tools, surveys, and document folders, and customize it with a few clicks without requiring FrontPage; however, FrontPage and Microsoft Designer will use the Office 10 documents and allow further development and configuration.

Office 10's adds speech recognition Word, Excel, and other apps now offer dictation and voice navigation features. Until the final version is available, I can't report how it will stand up to the third-party dictation systems that are already on the shelves.

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References

Microsoft Office
Message Center

Microsoft Releases Office 10 Beta in the Face of Linux Forces

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