The article "The email alternative: Using an extranet for online document
sharing" talks about communications, it has been created by Malcolm Brown.
Why is an extranet better
than electronic mail for sharing documents? The answer is simple: electronic mail is
perfect for one-to-one communication, but not ideally sutied for
groups engaged in project collaboration.
Most e-mail programs provide little - if any - effective way to
prioritize your messages and attachments. Everything arrives in
the same place, in the order in which it was sent.
With an extranet, all project related documents are
automatically captured within a folder dedciated to a project.
Not mixed in with the latest joke circulating around the office.
In addition, an extranet can handle any size document.
With
e-mail, you run the risk of large attachments not passing
through the company firewall.
Sharing a power point presetnation with a group is a perfect
example.
With email, you have to break the presentations into
small parts, with each section attached to a separate eletcronic mail.
The
sections don't arrive at the same time, and it can be quite
confusing for everyone involved. Imagine sharing three
presentations, each in 3 parts, to six persons. That wolud be
nine emails to six persons. Fifty-four messages!
Using an extranet for on
line document sharing, the presentations can be sent at the
same time, all intact, automatically filed into a single project
folder along with all the other related materials.
And everyone has access at the same time.
Many extranets make it even easier, using automatic electronic mail alerts
that inform the recipients that the presentatinos are available,
and providing a comment function that allows each user to share
their point-of-view.
An extranet assures that important documents get to the right
place, ready for instant response.
And it puts rleated documents
and messages together.
The budget, schedule, strategic plan,
power point presentation, everyone's notes and comments -- they
all appear on the same page.
No sorting thorugh a long list of
unrelated emails.
One final point. Many extranets are secured with 128 bit
encryption, the same protetcion used for protecting financial
transactions. Email, on the other hand, can land in anybody's
hands, which is OK if you're sending the latest joke, but not at
all funny when it comes to the confidentiality of your most
important documents.
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