Getting to the point
Advanced Reality has released Presence-AR Adapter for Excel, which is said to provide Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server with real-time collaboration capabilities. The company says the Presence-AR Adapter for Excel 1.3, its first adapter for SharePoint, enables authorized users to select a document from the document management system and automatically initiate a secure, peer-to-peer collaboration session during which multiple users can simultaneously edit the file from within a standard copy of Microsoft Excel. Advanced Reality reports also developing SharePoint Portal Server-enabled adapters for PowerPoint and Word.
Advanced Reality explains that from default folder view in SharePoint, the Excel adapter for Excel adds a "Collaborate" link to each Excel document. By clicking on this link, an authorized user can launch a secure, peer-to-peer collaboration session that automatically checks out the document if it's available. Other participants, with the proper access permissions, can join the session from inside and outside the corporate firewall using their local copy of Excel. During a session, all participants can view and modify the document, and see each other's changes in real time.
If the document is already checked out, the adapter for Excel will search for an active collaborative session involving the file and join the user to the session if permissions allow. At the end of each session, the Presence-AR Adapter for Excel automatically checks in the document, including the changes made, to SharePoint Portal Server. The adapter preserves and enforces all the document management controls defined in SharePoint, including version tracking, user roles and access control permissions.
Further, says its developer, the Presence-AR Adapter for Excel adds two interactive capabilities to Microsoft's spreadsheet application: chat and find/follow user. Chat allows participants to send each other text messages during a collaboration, which are logged in chronological order identifying which spreadsheet was being viewed when the message was sent. The find/follow user function eliminates the "where are you now?" syndrome by displaying to participants joining a session the current spreadsheet being viewed by the initiator of the collaboration. If enabled, this capability also ensures all users in the session have the ability to automatically "follow" any other participant as that participant moves around in the spreadsheet, says Advanced Reality.