Lotus Notes users can access the feeds directly from the database. Like push software, groupware can analyze and distribute information to individual users. Domino lets you create powerful agents that can periodically check a collection of documents and perform actions based on what they find. Similarly, Exchange and GroupWise use rules to perform similar kinds of tasks. Agents or rules allow you to glean information from a variety of sources based on a set of criteria, such as a company name or news source.
Most groupware products offer features beyond simply forwarding documents from a database.
Exchange, for example, lets you send an e-mail with just a link to the actual data. Domino takes this a step further with its newsletter feature, which periodically generates a single message with multiple links instead of dozens of individual messages. The extensive development features of groupware let you integrate push functionality in all kinds of applications.