Future Collaboration: Dropbox+Workflow+Social Network concept

—  Email attachments: The most common way. Difficult to complete complex workflow tasks and there is no data synchronization

—  Microsoft SharePoint: static workflow on documents. It doesn’t fit for the open cloud environment, difficult to create temporary groups and share data.

—  Google Docs: online editing documents at the same time. It provides basic permission controls that who can read/write the documents

—  Huddle: assign single tasks to users on a specific document, carried out by start and end dates.

—  Document collaboration means several authors work on a document or collection of documents together. They could be simultaneously co-authoring a document or reviewing a specification as part of a structured workflow.

—  Semiformal co-authoring: Multiple authors edit simultaneously anywhere in the document.

—  Formal co-authoring: Multiple authors edit simultaneously in a controlled way by saving content when ready to be revealed. Examples include: business plans, newsletters, and legal briefs for Word; and marketing and conference presentations for PowerPoint.

—  Comment and review: A primary author solicits edits and comments (which can be threaded discussions) by routing the document in a workflow, but controls final document publishing. Examples include online help, white papers, and specifications.

—  Document sets: Multiple authors are assigned separate documents as part of a workflow, and then one master document set is published. Examples include: new product literature and a sales pitch book.

1. A teacher sends homework to all the students after the class.
2. All students receive the homework file.
3. Students complete the homework.
4. The homework file gets submitted to the not-graded folder.
5. The teacher gets a message and starts marking it or sends the homework to teaching helpers.
6. The homework gets marked and sent back to the student to re-do of incorrect sections.
7. Student updates the doc accordingly and complete it
8. The teacher grades the doc again and complete.

For example, in an open research environment, researchers need to circulate documents to other appropriate persons when needed. Often, there is some legal constrains such as where the data can be accessed and how can these documents to be circulated. For example, in such a project, data cannot leak beyond the designated region.