The TAP project COOP-WWW project has developed the BSCW System (Shared Workspace System). This Groupware is an add-on to normal web servers and provides a set of tools for efficient group cooperation using the Internet and the World-wide Web The emphasis is on cooperation between technical and management professionals in locally dispersed and heterogeneous environments. The can be used for applications such as distributed document production, project management, virtual enterprises or enterprise/client relations. The BSCW system is used by thousand of users world-wide and allows asynchronous modes of cooperation.

The system is a generic platform for group collaboration and does not address particular applications specifically. It can be deployed for applications such as distributed project management, electronic commerce, teleteaching, virtual enterprises, and more.

In general, a BSCW server will manage workspaces for different groups, and users may be members of several workspaces (e.g. one workspace corresponding to each project a user is involved in or, in the case of teleteaching, each course that a student has selected). The shared workspace can contain different kinds of information such as documents, pictures, URL links to other Web pages, threaded discussions, member contact information and more. The contents of each workspace are represented as information objects arranged in a folder hierarchy.

A free 90-day trial version of the BSCW system can be downloaded from http://bscw.gmd.de. Licences for using the system are available from OrbiTeam Software GmbH (http://www.orbiteam.de).