Designing a Collaboration Environment for Teleworkers

Teleworking enables a more flexible scheduling of working time and places of work on the way to the modern information society. The rapid development of cooperative application software and electronic networking systems such as Internet and the penetration of web-based applications have demonstrated the enormous potential of technical facilities for new employment models. This paper defines requirements for an effective and flexible collaborative environment supporting coupled work scenarios for teleworking. An important feature of such an environment is to support synchronous collaboration with audio/videoconferencing and data and application sharing between distributed teleworkers. New communicative and collaborative software solutions are preconditions for such scenarios. The article points out the deficits of existing applications and suggest a solution for a meeting point for teleworkers based on our experiences with teleworking in the context of the intermobil project.