Collaborative Authoring and Officing Suites Home Page 

Potential Product List

Use Case Scenarios

Collaborative Authoring Product Breakdown

Introduction

     For the purposes of this project, the content was written through the lens of three specific scenarios: a community park building project, a collaborative book authoring project, and a virtual programming collaboration team. It was broken up this way intentionally, to give a different feel for each scenario and its particular needs. Readers will notice a different voice between the scenarios and perhaps some overlap between descriptions. This method allows for more comprehensive coverage of different tools and the ways they can be used. 

Site Link	docs.google.com	https://skydrive.live.com	www.zoho.com	online.thinkfree.com	https://www.apple.com/iwork-for-icloud
Established	2007	2007	2005	1990	Coming this fall; announced in June,2013
Storage	15 GB (more with purchase)	7 GB for 1 yr (more with purchase)	5 GB (more with purchase)	1 GB	5 GB (more with purchase)
Price	Free to a certain storage amount	Free to a certain storage amount	Free to a certain storage amount	Free	Free to a certain storage amount
Security	Cloud Environment	Cloud Environment	None listed for free option; SSO & active directory for paid options	Cloud Environment	Cloud Environment (iCloud)
Browser Accessibility	Firefox, IE, Chrome & Safari	Firefox, IE, Chrome & Safari	Firefox, IE, Chrome, Safari & Opera 12	All web browsers (Java is needed, no platform limitations: Windows, Mac and Linux)	Safari, IE & Chrome
Device Accessibility	Android & iPhone applications; all web browser capable devices	Window computers only; Windows phones, iPhones & iPad & Android devices	iPhone & Android devices; online chat	iPhone, Android & Windows mobile devices	Mac, iPhone, iPad
Offline Capabilities	Need mobile/internet connection (capabilities are sparse but budding for some aspects)	Need mobile/internet connection	Need mobile/internet connection; supports offline editing in Office apps via SkyDrive app	Need mobile/internet connection	Supports offline viewing
Neat Extras	Can work with multiple currencies in a spreadsheet; can create basic webpages through the word processor	Can upload to social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn	Built-in chat feature in real-time	Can share documents via smart phone	Will be able to create presenter notes in Keynote

The Product Selection Process: How Did We Choose?

Good question! From an initial list of over 30 products that had some form of cloud-based, collaborative authoring built into them, we narrowed this down to a list of 5 final selections. This was done via a 3 stage process:

• Stage 1: Initial product hunt
• This entailed everyone on our project team going out and doing an exhaustive seek and find scouring of the web
• Stage 2: First Voting Round
• All products were placed into a Google Form which was used as a voting tool
• Stage 3: Second Voting Round
• The final 7 products that received the most votes, other than Google Docs (which won voting on round 1 unanimously), were placed into a second round Google Form
• We finally ended up with a consensus of 5 products at the end

Scenario Product Evaluations

Community Project Scenario-Product Evaluation & Analysis

Collaborative Book Authoring Scenario-Product Evaluation & Analysis

Virtual Programming Collaboration Scenario-Product Evaluation & Analysis