The kind of virtual meetings that the appointments in your BSCW calendars support typically are a rather formal way of synchronous cooperation (i.e. you have to negotiate a fixed time for a synchronous event beforehand). The JMonitor provides support for more informal, spontaneous communication and cooperation among the members of a group, using BSCW as the infrastructure.

From a technical point of view, the JMonitor is a Java applet that you download once from the BSCW server and install with your Web browser (see section 2.5.1). JMonitor basically allows you to monitor your co-workers availability and activity within BSCW. Using the JMonitor tool you can see who's online, receive instant notification about other user's actions inside your shared workspace and contact your online co-workers by sending short text messages or starting a chat session.

Note:

As an optional component, the BSCW Monitor may not be available on your BSCW server, if the BSCW administrator has not yet activated this functionality in the server software. Please contact your local BSCW administrator for further information.