Week 2 – Other Asynchronous communication

WEB PORTALS

A web portal is a website with the single purpose for visitors to gain information from a range of different sources at the one location. Businesses use portals as a collaboration tool to better communicate with employees within the organization.
Portals use a centralized application linked to other applications within the same organization, which can share information across all these applications. People within an organization who use one application can gain access to another application from this one central application.

With this sharing of information across different applications, communication can be rapid allowing for collaboration to occur between different people using different application working together in varies groups within the business2.

MAIL

Mail is probably the oldest form of asynchronous collaboration while still in use has been overtaken by faster ways of delivering information in the last 10 years or so. Unlike digital communication like email, mail or snail mail, can be delivered as small packages or letters destined for local, nation or international distribution taking overnight to days, whereas email is delivered instantaneous.

The problem using mail as a form of collaborative communication is that it isn’t instant, because in modern business time is money. However, mail is still used (for jurisdictions and etiquette reasons) if documents need to be delivered in large packages such as large detailed drawings or particular samples (carpet, tiles, woods, materials etc) for a design, and this can’t be achieved through emails.

If this is the case, then mail can be an effective form of collaborative communication, be able to view and examine technical details or samples more closely and effectively making better decisions. This can’t be achieved as a soft copy via an email attachment.

Even though this form of communication is not a modern way in the past it was the only form of collaborative communication2.

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail viewed on 21st March 2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_portal viewed on 21st March 2008