AREA: A cross-application notification service for groupware

This paper presents AREA, an integrated synchronous and asynchronous notification service for awareness information. AREA uses a semantic model of the client applications to support cross-application awareness. The service is based on the dichotomy of interest and privacy. Notifications of user activities are a function of relevance in the current work situation and the privacy requirements of the involved users. The paper motivates the AREA framework and discusses the system in terms of its formal modeling capabilities and its operational aspects. This is followed by practical implementation considerations addressing the role of AREA as a groupware infrastructure. Finally, a prototype groupware application is presented, which uses the AREA service to support user awareness.