Plumtree Software Inc. is extending its portal software technology into collaboration and project management applications with the release later this month of the Plumtree Collaboration Server, the company announced Monday.
The new application allows users of Plumtrees Corporate Portal software to share documents, schedule tasks and participate in discussions, company officials said.
While some collaboration capabilities were already available in Plumtrees Corporate Portal 4.0 through the use of the companys Gadget Web Services technology, Collaboration Server is a separate application, with its own database for storing project information and a separate administrative experience for managing projects, officials said. Collaboration Server projects can span portal deployments, combining users, documents and tasks from multiple portals.
The application, however, does take advantage of Plumtrees Gadget Web Services technology to present documents, deadlines, announcements and conversation threads to the portal as Web Services. Each project in Collaboration Server is associated with a Plumtree Portal Community, and each object within a project is searchable, so portal users can quickly locate information within a project, officials said.
Through the portal interface, users can view calendars and assign tasks and milestones and share documents with version control, change notification, workflow, and check-in and checkout for editing.
Users can also publish completed documents from Collaboration Server to the Plumtree Document Directory. In addition, they have access to task lists with deadlines and dependencies and threaded discussions, with e-mail alerts when new threads are added.
“Collaboration is a crucial element of our vision of the portal as both an enterprise-wide delivery vehicle for data center applications and corporate communications and an interactive workspace for business units and workgroups throughout the enterprise,” said Plumtree CEO John Kunze, in a statement.
Plumtree also announced two products designed to support interactive workspaces in the portal: Plumtree Studio Server, which is a graphical environment for creating Gadget Web Services; and the Plumtree Gadget Framework for Microsoft Excel, which publishes Excel charts and tables to the portal.