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Q6 How Can You Use Collaboration Tools to Manage Shared Content? 53

Alternatives for Sharing Content
No Control Version Management Version Control
Email with attachments Google Docs Microsoft SharePoint
Shared les on a server Windows Web Apps
Microsoft Oce
Figure 2-14
Collaboration Tools
for Sharing Content Increasing degree of content control

Figure 2-14 lists collaboration tools for three categories of content: no control, version man-
agement, and version control.

Shared Content with No Control

The most primitive way to share content is via email attachments. However, email attachments have
numerous problems. For one, there is always the danger that someone does not receive an email,
does not notice it in his or her inbox, or does not bother to save the attachments. Then, too, if three
users obtain the same document as an email attachment, each changes it, and each sends back the
changed document via email, then different, incompatible versions of that document will be floating
around. So, although email is simple, easy, and readily available, it will not suffice for collaborations
in which there are many document versions or for which there is a desire for content control.
Another way to share content is to place it on a shared file server, which is simply a com-
puter that stores files . . . just like the disk in your local computer. If your team has access to a file
server at your university, you can put documents on the server and others can download them,
make changes, and upload them back onto the server. You can also store files on the cloud serv-
ers listed in Figure 2-13.
Storing documents on servers is better than using email attachments because documents
have a single storage location. They are not scattered in different team members’ email boxes,
and team members have a known location for finding documents.
However, without any additional control, it is possible for team members to interfere with
one another’s work. For example, suppose team members A and B download a document
and edit it, but without knowing about the other’s edits. Person A stores his version back on
the server and then person B stores her version back on the server. In this scenario, person A’s
changes will be lost.
Furthermore, without any version management, it will be impossible to know who changed
the document and when. Neither person A nor person B will know whose version of the document
is on the server. To avoid such problems, some form of version management is recommended.

Shared Content with Version Management on Google Drive

Systems that provide version management track changes to documents and provide features
and functions to accommodate concurrent work. For office documents, you can obtain version
management services from Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, and Microsoft SharePoint. Here
we will discuss the use of Google Drive.
Google Drive is a free service that provides a virtual drive in the cloud into which you can create
folders and store files. You can upload files of any type, but only files that are processed by Google
Docs receive version management. We’ll restrict the rest of this discussion to files of those types.
To use Google Drive, you need a Google Account, which you obtain by creating a gmail ad-
dress. (If you already have a gmail address, you already have a Google Account with the same
name as your gmail address.) To create a Google account, go to http://accounts.google.com and
fill out the form shown in Figure 2-15.