Glossary » groupware

groupware

any type of software designed for groups and for communication, including email, videoconferencing, workflow, chat, and collaborative editing systems.

This technology may be used to communicate, cooperate, coordinate, solve problems, compete, or negotiate. While traditional technologies such as the telephone qualify as groupware, the term is ordinarily used to refer to a specific class of technologies relying on modern computer networks, such as email, newsgroups, videophones, or chat.

Groupware technologies are typically categorized along two primary dimensions:

1. whether users of the groupware are working together at the same time (“realtime” or “synchronous” groupware) or different times (“asynchronous” groupware), and
2. whether users are working together in the same place (“colocated” or “face-to-face”) or in different places (“non-colocated” or “distance”).