ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the requirements for an organizational information system, the object-oriented data model that is used for the information representation, the architecture of the overall system, and the design of the user interface that presents and provides access to the multimedia information. The emerging research area of computer-supported cooperative work has yielded a number of groupware applications in the recent years. Most systems address a specific application area, such as joint editing, video conferencing, workflow management, and so on. Cooperation in teams and organizations is embedded in an organizational framework. Thus, the provision of information about the organizational context in which users work helps to choose the right patterns for communication and cooperation. Organizational information is of particular importance in large geographically distributed organizations and for the support of interorganizational cooperation. Organizational object types are used to define a schema for the representation of organizational components.
