eReview bridges the gap between

document viewing technologies and

generic Web-based conferencing

technologies with best for breed

features for real-time collaboration

and decision making across the

enterprise.

White Paper

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...............b r i n g i n g p e o p l e a n d d o c u m e n t s t o g e t h e rb r i n g i n g p e o p l e a n d d o c u m e n t s t o g e t h e rb r i n g i n g p e o p l e a n d d o c u m e n t s t o g e t h e rb r i n g i n g p e o p l e a n d d o c u m e n t s t o g e t h e rb r i n g i n g p e o p l e a n d d o c u m e n t s t o g e t h e r

REAL-TIME WEB-BASED DOCUMENT CENTRIC COLLABORATION ACROSS THE ENTERPRISE

The maturity of Internet and concurrent advances in Information Technology have redefined the fundamentals of

enterprise information exchange and altered the institutions and mechanisms for the delivery of products and

services forever. Collaboration has joined the ranks of integration and automation as a benchmark of business

innovation and a hallmark of competitive advantage. In today’s fast paced world, successful organizations, whether

large or small, are increasingly global in nature, whether they work on products or projects, such organizations

interact daily with globally dispersed offices, suppliers, contractors, vendors, partners, and customers. Working

collaboratively within this global environment is a challenge, as people and businesses must perform across

geographical, cultural and temporal boundaries. Project and product teams are not only dispersed, but the work is

increasingly cross-functional, cross-enterprise and multi-disciplinary, requiring input from individuals from both

inside and outside an organization. During the last decade, organizations have also realized that effective knowledge

management is the key to an organization’s collective expertise. This knowledge exists in two primary forms – a)

Tacit or unstructured knowledge that include ad-hoc ideas, brainstorming, etc. b) Explicit or recorded knowledge in

the form of documents and structured data. While there are solutions available to manage the structured data,

organizations increasingly feel the need for a single environment that enables users across the enterprise to

capture, manage, annotate, present, collaborate, distribute and share information created individually or put forth

in meetings, conferences, trainings or ad-hoc discussion sessions, anytime, anywhere.

The new paradigm of real-time collaboration eliminates the ineffectiveness of knowledge sharing due to the nature

of information media and its physical location and allows users to effortlessly unlock and capture content residing

in documents, drawings, CAD models, paper, multimedia presentation and animations, and even tacit knowledge

residing in the human mind (ideas and feedback). Web4 offers organizations a synchronous as well as an asynchronous

document viewing, annotation, printing, collaboration and workflow where its users, employees, customers, vendors,

suppliers and partners anywhere across the globe are able to view data and documents in real-time, make markups

to documents, co-view and co-markup with others, chat, share desktops and applications, carry out audio conference

– all from within one integrated environment. The obvious benefits of such collaboration platforms are improved

access to information, effective document-centric meetings, reduced travel costs, enhanced teamwork, and ability

to store the ad-hoc ideas and innovations for future use.

eReview Overview

eReview White Paper Web4, Inc.1

Introduction to eReview

Any project or product lifecycle includes multiple reviews and comments on in-process files. To facilitate reviewing

files, one needs to view and mark-up many different document types online, such as spreadsheets, word-processor

files, PDF files, CAD drawings and scanned images. Organizations have long felt the need of a viewing and markup

tool to work with in-process drawings and documents without the original software. There are viewers available

today those allow you to work with many file formats, including Microsoft Office documents, CAD drawings (such as

DWG, DXF, DWF, DGN), Portable Document Formats (PDF), Scanned Raster Images ( such as TIFF, PNG, GIF, and

JPEG), all from within a single thin client application in web browser interface. However, these product still at best

offer what can be termed as sequential or asynchronous

collaboration – a change is made, posted, and then another person sees the comments made by the previous

person, and makes his own comments, passes it on the next person in review cycle. This iterative process follows

until all changes have been processed and agreed upon by all participants in the review cycle. This type of sequential

collaboration is essential at times, but concurrent, real-time online meetings where all parties involved could co-

view and co-markup in real-time can really speed up and simplify the workflow and decision making cycle. As

projects become more demanding and complex in nature with tighter timeline and budget, the need for workgroups

to mind-share and collaborate interactively, anytime and from anywhere, becomes increasingly more critical. Decisions

made in an interactive, real-time environment using a combination of asynchronous and synchronous processes

will result in better and faster knowledge dissemination and decision making – the ability for a system to closely

emulate the real life scenario is a key competitive advantage in today’s cutthroat environment.

eReview allows you to view and markup many different types of documents and drawings without having or using

the application that created them. Markups and annotations are non-destructive; i.e., the original document is

never changed; rather, the markups, annotations and comments are saved in a corollary file, providing a history of

suggested changes. This process prevents uncontrolled changes to a document/drawing while protecting the integrity

of the document/drawing under review. Collaboration simplifies and enhances the review process. What used to be

sequential, time-consuming and difficult to accomplish is now intuitive, natural, and in real-time within a fully

collaborative Web environment. Real-time collaboration saves time, money, travel, and allows better and quicker

decisions. Real-time collaboration and ad-hoc workflow tools reduce the reaction time of the corporations much

faster and enable them to respond to the constantly changing needs quickly and effectively. It also helps to

collaborate on unstructured data and documents, capture the tacit knowledge and helps create a corporate memory

of meetings that are searchable and repayable.

eReview White Paper Web4, Inc.2

eReview as a View and Markup Tool:

eReview is a thin client applet that works in many web browsers such as Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer,

Mozilla on Windows, Linux, UNIX, and MAC (OS/X) platforms. eReview is the only Java-based client/server solution

that provides a true Multiple Document Interface (MDI), allowing users to open multiple documents and drawings

in separate windows inside eReview applet frame window. eReview’s viewing paradigm is a compilation of a unique

blend of technologies that enables users to intelligently view multiple document formats together in same applet.

This includes viewing the layers and blocks in popular 2D CAD documents from AutoCAD or Bentley Microstation,

view PDF files with true tree navigation, cutting a cross-section through any 3D CAD model like CATIA or Pro/E.

Viewing and redlining of all Microsoft Office documents, zooming or panning through any raster image is also

supported in eReview applet.

eReview provides the user a handful of common viewing functionalities to properly examine various unrelated,

unstructured content and data. While viewing multiple documents within a single applet instance, the user is able

to perform several viewing-related operations including panning, zooming and rotating. For very large and

complex files like E-size documents, an overview window (bird’s eye view) can be used to navigate

through certain parts of the document while Side-by-Side compare/tiling of documents and helps locate the changes

between revisions of the same documents or drawings.

A common set of powerful markup tools are available for each document and models to do graphical annotation

while reviewing documents from server. eReview supports a multi-layer, multi-author, multi-file markup paradigm

where each meeting attendee’s annotations are stored on a separate layer for easy individual reviewing and group

review. Multiple markup objects including circle, arc, square, WYSIWYG text, rectangle, clouds, line, free hand,

picture object, etc are possible using eReview’s powerful markup tools. The user is also able to modify markup

attributes such as line thickness, line type, color, line terminators, arrow types, transparency, etc.

eReview as a Conferencing Tool:

What sets eReview apart from other view and markup software is that it offers a complete Web-based meeting and

conferencing system. Fig-1 illustrates the eReview online meeting session where chairperson could start a meeting

asking participants to join the session. Finished meetings are possible to be saved for playback in future.

The following are the salient features of eReview’s conferencing:

eReview White Paper Web4, Inc.3

eReview is an unique combination of Web-based view and mark-up with collaboration and conferencing tools.

eReview is an unique tool that facilitates online synchronous real-time meeting within the same applet interface

of document viewer. This reduces user training to do collaboration instantly for it profound easy-to-use interface.

Servlet tunneling allows making the tool a true firewall-friendly environment for the Internet, intranets and

extranets.

Allows real-time, web-based, document reviews among review teams that are scattered across the globe.

Maintains and archives detailed minutes of meetings and the corresponding markups and annotations.

There is support for playback of the meeting events later in real-time, at a chosen speed with applied filter

rules. It keeps an audit trail to eliminate future misunderstandings and mistakes.

Reduces the decision making cycle, and eventually reduces the time-to-market, the key to success in today’s

competitive marketplace.

Thin-client, zero-signature, zero-administration; Modular and scalable architecture allows easy integrations by

the users, or any third party vendors.

Application and desktop sharing enables meeting participants to view and control applications as well as desktops

running on a remote participant’s desktop.

Meeting participants can jointly view and annotate multiple documents, 2D drawings and 3D CAD models

intelligently in real-time.

Users can add multiple annotations objects on a document.

There are different layers of annotations/markups present in the markup files, based on authors. Every user/

author has his or her own markup layer by default.

eReview White Paper Web4, Inc.4

Chat, whiteboard and roaming features.

Multimedia presentation and animation sharing

allow meeting participants to share video,

animation and other static or moving

presentation.

Attendee transparency and moderator control

of attendee privileges.

Synchronous mode to ensure all participants

see the same view.

Multi-point real-time audio conferencing over

HTTP.

Comprehensive meeting scheduler and

management system.

Web casting of entire eReview meeting to a

large audience with limited features.

Threaded chat markup allows one to chat

around a particular portion of the drawing or

document.

Asynchronous Review

Real-time collaboration and ad-hoc workflow tools reduce the reaction time of the corporations much faster and

enable them to respond to the constantly changing needs quickly and effectively. It also helps to collaborate on

unstructured data and documents, capture the tacit knowledge and helps create a corporate memory of meetings

that are searchable and re-playable. As, current market conditions change, and companies start to free up in-house

resources to save money, outsourcing and physical dispersion of the teams started increasing. In these market

conditions, we at Web4 see each time zone representing a loss of opportunity (from simultaneous collaborative

work and communications) and an opportunity to cut time (from 7 x 24 development by teams in multiple continents).

That is why; Web4 combines the advantages of eReview’s real-time mode, where the concurrent meetings can take

place, and Asynchronous document-review mode, when such real-time collaboration may not be possible.

Asynchronous mode allows teams to review multiple documents, in their own time, still collaborating with each

other. The entire business process is built-in along with the collaboration technology. The teams can view, markup

and comment on the documents. These comments get saved automatically and entire trail of comments can be

seen by the team-members at any given time. The decision-making authority can then review the comments and

take actions, such as Approve the comments, Reject, or send it back without any action. All this can happen in

separate times, or if some users happen to be online at the same time, then every user receives all actions in real-

time; thereby, not wasting any time and money to review documents among the teams. Fig -2 explains the

complete eReview asynchronous workflow review.

Fig - 1

Online Meeting

Communication

Review andComment

Participant 1 Chairperson Participant 2

Documents

ChairpersonStarts Meeting

ParticipantsJoin Meeting

eReview White Paper Web4, Inc.5

eReview is more than people collaborating with other people. To create true collaboration, organizations also need

application-to-application interoperability. While choosing your collaborative platform, you must ensure that it is

not a closed one and can integrate and interoperate with other systems easily and effectively. For this, the system

must have a good interface to integrate with other applications.

eReview has a rich set of APIs to allow integration at various levels. There are four major ways to integrate another

system with eReview:

Interoperability of eReview

HTTP Request to eReview Servlet takes API parameters as request header and in return sends a thin applet

instance to end user browser.

eReview Applet public API available for Java Script language programming. An embedded eReview applet

inside HTML page is exposed as an object to Java Script. Users invoke the applet API to load document and load

annotations.

eReview Applet as a OEM Viewer engine inside third party applets. Customized applets are possible to

create using eReview and collaboration engine.

eReview Java Beans exposed for ActiveX client to utilize eReview power of view and collaboration.

eReview’s integration with EDM/PDM systems allows project participant to view, annotate and collaborate on

centralized documents in different user interface modules. In a business workflow process eReview is treated as

single unique universal tool for view, annotate, print and collaborate on documents of many file formats. Fig-3

illustrates an overall architecture of eReview integration with any DMS client.

Fig - 2

Asynchronous Document Review

Initiators and Reviewers can “Accept” or

“Reject” after each document reviewReviewers are invited

to put their comments

Documents for Review

Initiator starts an Asynchronous

Document-review

Easy to use threaded chat or annotation

to get collective decision on any

part of the document

Guest participants outside the review

cycle can be invited instantly to join the

session through email interface

Reviewers join review

sessions in their own time from

anywhere on any platform

Annotations and comments made

on each document are saved on a

central server for easy access

eReview White Paper Web4, Inc.6

Fig - 3

eReview MDI Interface

eReview Java applet supports a true Multiple Document Interface. This allows the user to simultaneously open as

many documents as required in a review session. Normal review sessions are based on reviewing multiple documents

including drawings, Word docs, and other miscellaneous types of files. As seen in the Fig -4 a number of files of

different formats is possible to open within the same instance of the viewer. According to requirements files can be

opened in roaming or collaborative mode. The navigation tool in the left allows switching document focus from one

to another.

eReview Feature in Brief

Fig - 4

View Document

Add Annotation

Online Meeting

Review Documents

Playback Meeting

EDM/PDM/DMS API

INTEGRATION ARCHITECTURE

Project Information

Managed Documents

Secured Access

Review Collaboration

Workflow Management

Manage Online Meeting

Manage Review Process

eReview Applet

eReview Collaboration Server

eReview Document Viewer Server

EDM/PDM/DMSApplication Server

Internet/Intranet

DMS Client

eReview White Paper Web4, Inc.

Viewing toolbar contains buttons pertaining to viewing and printing operations only. eReview provides the user a

handful of common viewing functionalities to properly examine various unrelated, unstructured content and data.

While viewing multiple documents within a single applet instance, the user is able to perform several viewing

related operations including panning, zooming and rotating. For very large and complex documents, an overview

window (bird’s eye view) can be used to navigate through certain parts of the document while Side-by-Side

compare/tiling of documents and helps locate the changes between revisions of the same documents or drawings.

Fig-5 depicts the standard viewing tools in eReview.

7

Viewing Tools:

Fig - 5

Intelligent viewing: This is achieved through the state-of-the-art intelligence built into eReview. eReview

keeps the intelligence of the information stored in the documents, that can be used later for any manipulation

and controlling of viewing. Each document type in eReview is handled separately and the inherent characteristics

of the document are exposed through a unique feature called “Drawing Controls”. eReview retains the information

such as layers, blocks and views for 2D CAD formats (DWG, DGN, DWF etc), layers, bookmarks for PDF

formats, line width/ colors for HPGL, brightness, contrast, aliasing etc for scanned images and so on, and the

ability to manipulate the views using this intelligent information.

Auto-detection: eReview has the ability to automatically detect the file type i.e. even if the file name extension

refers to some other or non-standard formats.

Preview support to handle large documents: eReview has an effective way to display the preview of the

entire document. This is useful when the users just want to have a quick look at the document, rather than to

extensively view and markup.

Virtual Multi-page documents: eReview has the ability to consolidate individual single-page documents from

different file formats, into one virtual document. These virtual,multi-page documents are easy to display while

reviewing. This helps users to construct a single compound document out of several individual documents.

Server-side and Client-side viewing support: eReview provides the option for client-side as well as server-

side viewing. The users can also switch between these two modes of viewing namely the client-side and the

server-side at any time. Viewing of some important formats is explained in the following sections of this

document.

Markup Tools:

Fig - 6

eReview White Paper Web4, Inc.8

Powerful markup tools are available for each document and models to do graphical annotation while reviewing

documents from server. Fig-6 depicts the standard markup tools in eReview. eReview supports a multi-layer, multi-

author, multi-file markup paradigm where each meeting attendee’s annotations are stored on a separate layer for

easy individual reviewing and group review. Multiple markup objects including circle, arc, square, WYSIWYG text,

rectangle, clouds, line, free hand, picture object, etc are available.

Each markup object is associated with a markup layer object. Markup layer object identifies the ownership of the

markup. That is why it is easier for eReview to have multiple markup layers, owned by different authors, within the

same markup file. Markups are also time-stamped to recognize the creation time.

The eReview Meeting

The eReview Meeting Screen is opened and displays five sections as seen in Fig-7: (1) the Tools section, (2) the

Viewer section where multiple drawings can be viewed and marked up, (3) the Control section where the Chairperson

controls the meeting, invites others to attend, assigns privileges to others, and has access to the eReview Document

Vault, (4) the Chat section, used for textual communication with other attendees, (5) the Navigation section to

navigate document pages and markups.

Fig - 7

Inviting others to join a meeting after the meetinghas begun:

Click on Invite

An email form will appear. Enter your email address

and the email address of the person to attend,

then click on Send.

An email containing a direct URL link to the meeting

is sent to the invitee. The person clicks on the

URL Link and is entered into the meeting.

The chairperson can enable privileges for

attendees by clicking in the appropriate box for

each attendee.

Assigning Privileges to Attendees in a meeting:

Authors can add multiple layers also within the same markup files.

There can be multiple markup files associated to the base document.

Each markup file has info about different layers of markup, their authors and the base document, to which they

are associated.

While loading the already saved markup files to the base document, eReview has built-in intelligence to only

display the markup files associated with that base document.

Markups cannot be edited by any person other than the author.

eReview White Paper Web4, Inc.9

Using Chat:

Chat with attendees of the meeting by entering text into the Type Message box and then clicking on Send. The

message is broadcast to all attendees and appears in the Chat window.

To selectively chat with certain attendees, a feature known as “Whispering” is available. To enable whispering,

highlight the attendee(s) to whom you would like to whisper by just clicking on their names. So long as attendee

names are highlighted, any further messages you type will be received only by those selected attendees. To go

back to the normal mode; i.e., include all attendees, control click on the highlighted attendee names to deselect.

Attendee Action/Status:

At the bottom of the Viewer section is an Attendee Action/Status bar. In this area, status about each attendee

is displayed and updated as each attendee performs actions. It will indicate who is typing, creating a markup,

modifying a markup, etc.

The next line provides the status of attendees, indicating who is coming on-line, inactive, experiencing network

problems, busy, etc.

A separate Action log containing the above information is created and archived.

Conferencing Tools:

eReview has a number of collaboration tools that ensures smooth real-time/asynchronous meetings sessions between

people dispersed across the globe. Fig-8 depicts the standard conferencing tools in eReview. What sets eReview

apart from other view and markup software is that it offers a complete Web-based meeting and conferencing

system.

The following are the salient features of eReview’s conferencing features:

Fig - 8

Application and desktop sharing enables meeting participants to view and control applications as well as desktops

running on a remote participant’s desktop.

Meeting participants can jointly view and annotate multiple documents, 2D drawings and 3D CAD models

intelligently in real-time.

Chat, whiteboard and roaming features.

Shared Cursor and Collaborative mouse features help an attendee point to certain areas in a document so that

highlighting of areas appear in all the screens.

Enable/disable attendees privileges including Control, View and Modify Annotation rights by clicking on appropriate

box.

eReview White Paper Web4, Inc.10

ROI with eReview

The immediate ROI benefits of the application include the following:

Reduces project and product development time and cost drastically by empowering teams to share ideas,

respond to changes quickly.

Reduces travel costs, as geographically dispersed teams can meet in online review sessions.

Centralized communication.

Ability to store and retrieve both structured (documents) and ad hoc ideas (meetings).

Better quality control.

Cross platform, server-centric solution, runs on all flavors of UNIX, Windows, Linux and MAC-OS/X.

Comes ready with a web server, which is installed along with eReview during installation. Works with all web

servers and web application servers like MS-IIS, Java Web Server, Apache, Weblogic, Websphere etc.

Conclusion

Business today is ruthlessly competitive on a global scale. To be successful, companies need to focus on improving

internal processes to accelerate time-to-market and achieve higher return on investment. Many new methodologies

are being employed to achieve the desired levels of success – from small, focused project teams, to outsourcing,

to using resources scattered around the world. Companies must strive to find the right solution that enables them

to connect with their global team and knowledge base. Suppliers, vendors, partners, and customers make up

“virtual organizations” or value chains. Global collaboration among all members of the “value-chain” during the

product or project demands that they have proper access to all information and documents when they require it –

in the correct version – irrespective of where the persons or the documents are located. eReview provides a digital

collaborative platform where geographically distributed team members can view and co-view, review, markup and

co-markup; approve, reject and take joint decisions; subscribe to event notifications; schedule and hold online real

time meetings; and use online discussions to find solutions to business issues. Global virtual teams with proper

asynchronous and synchronous collaboration tools running on robust, scalable and secure platform can increase

the innovation, speed, and effectiveness of an organization many fold.

Multimedia presentation and animation sharing allow meeting participants to share video, animation and other

static or moving presentation.

Attendee transparency and moderator control of attendee privileges.

Synchronous mode to ensure all participants see the same view.

Multi-point real-time audio conferencing over HTTP.

Multi-point real-time audio/video conferencing as an optional module.

Ability to record and playback the entire meeting according to attendee’s rights within the meeting

Meeting messenger system to notify and invite team members through instant messaging.

Comprehensive meeting scheduler and management system.

Webcasting of entire eReview meeting to a large audience.

Threaded chat markup allows one to chat around a particular portion of the drawing or document.

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