User-defined telecooperation services

A user-defined telecooperation service (UTS) provides service elements for application-specific communication and cooperation processes as well as integrated means for the service definition, adaptation, and management. It supports user groups with particular communication, cooperation, and coordination needs which may change over time and which may be that special, that the service maintenance can be carried out only by the users themselves in an economic and satisfactory way. The users may be organized in various open and closed groups. They dispose of personal computing equipment connected via wide-area telecommunication networks. The users participate only from time to time. Therefore, there is a partial and varying accessibility of users and user sites. Interactions are mainly based on asynchronous communication operations. The cooperation and coordination functions have to consider unreachable users. The paper introduces the notion of UTS. Fields of application are addressed. Moreover, we describe the principles of the service element definitions and outline the architecture of a supporting system.