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Enterprise Collaboration Tools: Page 3 of 14

All the products use e-mail to notify users of changed workspaces. And most--exceptions are Hummingbird's and Microsoft's--process e-mail destined for workspaces. None ignore the value of directory services to create, authenticate and assign roles to users. But each has idiosyncrasies. Hummingbird and Stellent can authenticate users with NTLM (NT LAN Manager) and an LDAP-enabled directory. Open Text also can use NTLM or an LDAP-enabled directory for authentication, but its support is limited to a Sun ONE Directory. Otherwise, it can import and synchronize users with Active Directory or an Exchange 5.5 directory. Interwoven, SiteScape and Vignette import and synchronize users with an LDAP-enabled directory. SiteScape also can use NTLM authentication if the server is running on Windows.

Our Editor's Choice winner is one of the easiest products to use and provides feature-rich collaborative workspaces at a competitive price. Forum is intuitive for both users and administrators and supports multiple platforms and databases to fit any enterprise architecture. It includes IM as well as an internal messaging component. And if you don't have the resources to deploy it, Forum is available as a service (licensed on a per-user basis).

Like Microsoft SharePoint, Forum offers wizards to help users create document folders, workspaces and discussion lists. After selecting a workspace name and a directory name to access the document directory through the Web, we selected users or groups to access the space. Then we chose resources, such as discussion forums, calendars, contacts and a chat room, to add to the workspace.

Chat-room dialogue can be saved as a transcript and attached to the workspace or downloaded to the local machine. Like Hummingbird Enterprise Collaboration, Forum includes an internal IM utility. It can be used for messaging and presence as long as a user enables a "listener" function to send and receive messages.

To import documents into the system, just select them from a local or shared file system; in contrast, Stellent's and Vignette's products use a bulk import utility. Once our documents were uploaded, we could view them with an HTML viewer and edit them online. Once a workspace starts filling with documents and discussions, the included search engine is necessary.