Email and the Web Into Business Processes With trained, disciplined staff, simple Internet facilities can be used for document management, groupware and work-flow. Web documents need not be flashy graphic rich, tastefully designed works of art. Routine circulars are circulated on the Defence intranet. Groupware is provided free with the Internet in a simplified form. Defence makes considerable use of e-mail for circuiting documents for comment.
Workflow systems allow automated routing of electronic forms around an organisation.
At each step there are a defined set of items to be completed, calculations made and checks on data. However, in many cases it is simpler to just have the form e-mailed around and manually completed. The novelty of producing web pages wears off, after the first few hundred. The first public Defence home page was prepared using little more than a text editor. In place of sophisticated web management software, the traditional computer programming disciplines of version control, test and production databases and archiving were used.