Startup Adds Collaboration Features To Microsoft OfficeStartup Adds Collaboration Features To Microsoft Office

With products like Google Docs that let people write and edit documents at the same time via the Web, Microsoft Office's lack of collaboration features has suddenly become glaring. Though Microsoft is working to plug those holes, a startup emerged from stealth mode Wednesday hoping to beat the Office team at its own game.

DocVerse, founded in late 2007 by former Microsoft employees, plans to release software that makes it easier to share and collaborate on Microsoft Office documents via a Web application, a plug-in for Office, and eventually another plug-in for SharePoint.

"Office does a lot of things really well, but to date it's never really done collaboration particularly well," DocVerse CEO Shan Sinha said in an interview. "Our goal is to fix that."

DocVerse has two sets of features: sharing and live editing. With DocVerse, when a user saves a document, DocVerse automatically updates a Web version of the document that can be opened in Office or over the Web with the Firefox, Safari, or Internet Explorer Web browsers.

"Even Mac users without Office should be able to view an Office document, and without even a plug-in," Sinha said, adding that this sharing mechanism also does away with the popular but sometimes trouble-laden method of sending e-mail attachments back and forth.

Once a document is shared, other users can then leave feedback about the document. A comment box appears next to DocVerse documents, including when they're opened in Office.

The other major feature of DocVerse is live editing, something that's found in several Web-based productivity suites like Google Docs. With DocVerse, multiple people can edit documents simultaneously, which Sinha said should reduce the need for complicated check-in and checkout procedures. DocVerse keeps track of all edits to a document so that if someone makes a mistake, users can roll back the document to earlier edits. Users also can monitor documents to be notified whenever a document gets updated.

It's not just Google Docs that DocVerse has to contend with. Microsoft has an array of collaborative tools like SharePoint, Office Live Workspaces, and Office Groove, and more robust collaboration is on the way when Office 14 hits shelves. According to Sinha, DocVerse comes at Office collaboration from a different angle than any of these products. SharePoint may be increasingly popular as a collaboration and content management system, Sinha said, but at its core it remains a "great, rich file server." While DocVerse is aimed at everyone from consumers to enterprises, SharePoint aims mostly at enterprises. It also continues to require check-in and checkout procedures, while DocVerse eliminates those needs and adds the live collaboration features SharePoint doesn't offer. Future plans even have DocVerse plugging into SharePoint as a potential place to store files for enterprises that use SharePoint and don't want to use the SaaS version of DocVerse.

Sinha scoffed at comparisons with Office Live Workspaces. "It's basically only a locker in the cloud, a file share in the cloud," he said. "It's pretty much a bad replacement for sending e-mails."

When it releases Office 14, Microsoft plans to offer live collaborative editing for the first time as part of Office Web Applications, which will have a limited subset of the editing capabilities in the full Office suite. However, this will be offered only for Web users or those who have Office 14, Sinha predicted. "That'll be leaving Office 2003 and Office 2007 users out in the cold, and that gives us time to give today's users a set of features they really need and are asking for today," he said.

Currently, DocVerse only supports PowerPoint 2007 on Windows Vista and Windows XP, but support for the rest of Office 2007 and Office 2003 is coming soon. Sinha said DocVerse is considering a Mac version, but the lack of APIs for Office on the Mac makes that a tricky proposition. Instead of sending and receiving just the changes to an edited file, DocVerse transfers the entire file, but changing that is a top priority for the team, according to a post on DocVerse's help forums. Other features to be expected soon are presence awareness and the ability to open up a chat client from within a document.

Once it emerges from beta, DocVerse will have free, Pro, and Enterprise versions. The Pro version will come with a higher level of service than the free product, while the Enterprise version (available within the next six to 12 months) will be able to take advantage of on-premises file repositories like SharePoint and will likely have additional security and management features.

If DocVerse can pull it off, what's Microsoft to do? information has published an in-depth report on overhauling Microsoft. Download the report here (registration required).