Intelligent Awareness in Support of Collaborative Virtual Work Groups

Abstract

Abstract. Collaborative Virtual Work Groups (CVWG) are small groups of people that perform tasks, share responsibilities, goals and decisions but are distanced in terms of space, time and cultures, and maintain their connections through technology. Collaborative S ystems support them enabling a shared environment and informing of its state and changes through a mechanism called Awareness. In this paper we argue that these changes and their consequences can be understood in an ontological work context (we call it "se mantic awareness"). This approach allows us to infer the relevance of the awareness info rmation and control its delivery. To do so, we determine a user context (location, device, preferences), which allows us to infer the user willingness to be exposed to this information. The mechanism is enabled through a Multi -Agent System (MAS), where an agency represents each user's perception and actual context. We also present a case study and discuss the obtained results.

Distributed Shared Contexts

“…For instance, AwServer [11] is a multi-agent system that delivers contextual information about users' actions (high level of abstraction) trough different Internet-based channels proactively. Users are contacted through e-mail, private messaging systems and cellular phone or regular groupware widgets; depending on the relevance of the information, users' availability (i.e.…”

“…Additionally, by having a context designed at a high level, it significantly facilitates the construction of applications that extend and ground context's semantics [18]. However, we argue that in [11] devices are merely seen as different interfaces of a unique virtual space through which the system propagates contextual information but, although it supports adaptation (as applications can react to contextual information), the workload (actions) created in portable devices is neglected.…”

“…We have designed a FIPA [19] compliant multi-agent system called "DSC Server" (Distributed Shared Context) where a set of agents, named "Context Managers" (CM), maintains the distributed shared context. DSC Server is an extension of [11]. Users' actions are interpreted through a work context that must be instantiated in order to reflect the task at hand (called a local vocabulary).…”

“…Grayed components of the figure are fully described in [11] and [17] and are not the main concern of this paper. CM agents move to portable devices, when working in isolation, events correspond to a Local context (Levent).…”

“…Furthermore, based on the relevance of the events that occur in the shared environment and the current user context, group members can be contacted proactively (push) through different devices either fixed or mobile [11]. In both cases contextual information related to workgroup activities (i.e.…”