Practicity is a web-based knowledge sharing environment. The idea is
that colleagues who are collaborating on some project will do so in the
Practicity web environment via their web browser. The designers claim
that the Practicity server, seeing how it facilitates all interaction
between the users of the "community-of-practice", is able to
capture all interactions between users, the content of those interactions,
and the context of those interactions and store it in a central
knowledge base so that users can access it and share it from that one
central location via their web browsers. It is designed not only for
colleagues but also the clients who are involved in some project, so on that
note different areas of the community can be secured to limit access to
different user-groups.
Knowledge addition can take place both manually and automatically. One
key of the system is that it can monitor interaction among different
participants and automatically store information and context regarding those
interactions. Knowledge addition can be done manually, of course, and
the level of customization as to who is authorized to introduce what types
of knowledge is fairly robust. Other users claim the knowledge
addition process is easy.
Since much of Practicity's knowledge acquisition can happen automatically,
the knowledge that is acquired in such a manner is organized all relative to
each other based on context as well as information.
Documented users claim viewing stored knowledge is easy and straightforward,
but this cannot be verified until I am able to use the sample server that I
signed up for.
Documented users claim finding stored knowledge is easy and straightforward,
but this cannot be verified until I am able to use the sample server that I
signed up for. How the contextual information relates to the retrieval
process is the biggest wild card, but there is at least some information as
to the content based retrieval I can provide before testing - the content
based search is powered by dtSearch, a fast and mature text searching system
which apparently provides robust indexing and relation data on the searches
it performs. More on the user end of Practicity's searching after I
can participate in the sample web server.
Since Practicity is designed primarily to be a collaborative environment for
many different users performing different roles, this is one of the most
important parts of the system. Again, I cannot confirm how it is in
the real world because I have not yet had a chance to participate in the
demo. As far as design promises, this is definately where this system
shines. Since it automatically captures knowledge based on
peer-to-peer interaction which occurs through the system, it is able not
only to catch information (content), but also contextual meta-data that
seems like it would be VERY important since it is not derived in any
statistical manner, but rather through real-world interaction between two
people with the same purposes/goals. With context-based information
supplementing content, and seeing how any user on the system has a
"contextual state" about him or her as far as the system is
concerned, tracking the usage of knowledge is second nature to this system -
indeed, it's what this system was designed to do.
Once again, this is the entire point of the system. The knowledge base
is in one central location and is maintained by one entity (the Practicity
server). The development of that repository is unique in that not only
does it occur through collaboration, it occurs BECAUSE of
collaboration. Two people don't need to get together and say
"Let's develop this knowledge base so we can use it!" They
merely have to get together, start talking about what's important to them,
and the knowledge base starts developing from there.
This system can be used in many different ways and at least one of the case
studies was a corporation that used it for all employees and used it to
track organizational and procedural processes amongst employees
interacting. Therefore, when used for this purpose, it fulfills it.